Rvm and Gems, Bundle Show and Gem List

Difference between bundle show gemname and gem list gemname

The confusion comes from the issue bundler is solving.

When you install Gems into your system-wide gem repository you end up with multiple versions of the gem once you have a couple of apps.

So for example you could end up with 3 Rails versions: 3.2.8, 3.2.6 and 3.1.0

If you do a require rails rubygems could use any of these versions and you'll end up with confusion if your App that was initially built against 3.1.0 isn't compatible with some change s in 3.2.8.

What bundler does is install exactly the gems that are specified in the Gemfile.lock and locks those down for the use of that app. Bundler therefore modifies the load-paths for rubygems so only the Gems in the Gemfile.lock are really available to the app.

Therefore bundle install is not installing gems into the system-wide gem directory but rather installs to a different path for each project. That's why you see the gem in a bundler directory and not system wide.
If you install rack-cache through gem install you'll also see it in gem list.

In RVM, gem list command does not show installed gems

bundle install will install the gems to the vendor/cache directory within a rails app, which does not install them in the gems directory. To list the gems installed by bundler, use bundle list

bundle package with rvm

As per my comment. You didn't run package after adding devise to your gem file which is why it isn't in vendor/cache. Bundle install still needs to install the gems on your system.

From bundler website

The package command will copy the .gem files for your gems in the bundle into ./vendor/cache. Afterward, when you run bundle install,
Bundler will use the gems in the cache in preference to the ones on rubygems.org.

Additionally, if you then check that directory into your source
control repository, others who check out your source will be able to
install the bundle without having to download any additional gems.

The rvm gemset and bundler solve some of the same problems with which set of gems/versions are to be used / activated. With bundler now you don't need to use rvm gemsets , the gemfile handles it. But this wasn't always the case.

Why does RVM gem list shows gems I did not install?

most likely this happens because the global gemset contains all the gems, try:

rvm 1.9.2@global gem list

you can compare this with gem list to see only your gems:

rvm use 1.9.2
diff --normal <(gem list) <( rvm 1.9.2@global gem list ) | sed '/^[^<]/ d ; s/^< //'

or using only GEM_HOME as GEM_PATH:

GEM_PATH=$GEM_HOME gem list

Gem list doesn't show bundler after Successfully installed bundler

The PATH of the root user is likely not the same as the PATH of your current user. Therefore the gem command that root loads will not be the same as the gem command you load as a normal user. This makes sudo gem install save the gems into a different location (the location of the Ruby installation found in the PATH of the root user).

To fix this issue, the most straightforward solution is to force root to use the same gem command by giving it the full path:

sudo `which gem` install ...

Note the use of backticks. Using backticks this way, the command will essentially expand to something like:

sudo /some/path/to/the/user/ruby/installation/bin/gem install ...

To figure out if the gem command of root is different from your default gem command, you can do this:

# As normal user check output of this command
which gem

# ..and compare it to the output of this command
sudo which gem

RVM project specific gems

In your .rvmrc write following code:

rvm use <ruby_version>@<project_name> --create

In my case ruby_version is ruby-1.9.3-p194

Once you navigate to your project path, run bundle install to install all the gems specific to your project.

Gems not in Local Gems after bundle install

Your default in this app is to install to vendor/bundle. You can tell this by It was installed into ./vendor/bundle text which appears after gems installation.

Bundler documentation specifies that you have to pass --system to install in system location:

--system: Install to the system location ($BUNDLE_PATH or $GEM_HOME) even
          if the bundle was previously installed somewhere else for this
          application

EDIT: More explanation is that your ruby knows only about gems installed with --system option when not using bundle exec. You can see your gems from vendor/bundle or whatever path you've chosen by running bundle exec gem list or (as Casper noticed) bundle list. Now it is your choice whether you want your gems in system location or in application directory.

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