Should Gemfile.Lock Be Included in .Gitignore

Should Gemfile.lock be included in .gitignore?

Simple answer in the year 2021:
Gemfile.lock should be in the version control also for Rubygems. The accepted answer is now 11 years old.

Some reasoning here (cherry-picked from comments):

@josevalim https://github.com/heartcombo/devise/pull/3147#issuecomment-52193788

The Gemfile.lock should stay in the repository because contributors and developers should be able to fork the project and run it using versions that are guaranteed to work.

@rafaelfranca https://github.com/rails/rails/pull/18951#issuecomment-74888396

I don't think it is a good idea to ignore the lock file even for plugins.

This mean that a "git clone; bundle; rake test" sequence is not guarantee to be passing because one of yours dozens of dependencies were upgraded and made your code break. Also, as @chancancode said, it make a lot harder to bisect.

Also Rails has Gemfile.lock in git:

• https://github.com/rails/rails/commit/0ad6d27643057f2eccfe8351409a75a6d1bbb9d0

Git will not ignore Gemfile.lock

Is it because the Gemfile.lock is already committed to your repository? Is it showing as a new file (with ?? in git status) or a modification (with M in git status). If it's the latter then you will need to remove the file with git rm Gemfile.lock. Once you commit that change then the file should stop showing up in git status.

As an aside, it's generally best practice to keep the Gemfile.lock committed to the repository (unless this is a gem). Here's a good SO question about that topic: Should Gemfile.lock be included in .gitignore?

Is the gemfile.lock file needed in a Jekyll site hosted with Github Pages?

GitHub Pages doesn't look for a Gemfile.lock file nor the Gemfile itself.
All it needs is a proper config file to load gems / plugins.

How to manage Gemfile.lock with git in rails

Do not add Gemfile.lock to your .gitignore!

This ruins the point of the lock file.

Your Rails app is described by the Gemfile, which uses a loose description of gem versions installed for your app, based on dependencies and soft versions. Because some minor version and dependency upgrades can be breaking, the lock file keeps your app described with specific versions and Git refs down to a specific commit, so that you can achieve a working state of your app when you deploy to dev/testing/production servers and/or share the repo with your peers.

If you do ignore the lock file, any new user or server will just install gems to the latest versions and dependencies as defined/limited by the Gemfile. You will spend hours trying to figure out the "best mix of software that makes your app work locally" when the lock file would have already done that for you.

The better solution is to stop using bundle update unless you're looking to update a gem inside of your Gemfile. You should almost always use bundle install to work off of the lock file - and it will never be changed. This works between branches and git pulls.

However, once you want to update a gem version for your product, you should update the Gemfile, run bundle update <gemname>, and then commit the resulting Gemfile and Gemfile.lock

Finally, if you accidentally ran bundle update and now you have an updated Gemfile.lock, you should just reset the lock file and re-run bundle install

Remote repository and Gemfile.lock - Rails App

When you run bundle, bundler will use the gems that are listed in the Gemfile.lock. bundle update updates the Gemfile.lock to get the latest of all gems listed in the Gemfile while still satisfying all dependencies.

You can run bundle update on a particular gem as well, which will limit the Gemfile.lock changes to dependencies of said gem.

You need to be a little more clear about which errors you are receiving? Are they dependency related? or are you not able to build a gem with native extensions? or something else? are you using gemsets - if not, that might be useful to prevent gem collisions.

Is there really a problem with Gemfile.lock being committed? Are you a contributor to the repository?

Additionally, bundler gets updated every now and then. You may want to update your version of bundler before running bundle.

gem update bundler

Should `.bundle` directory be added to CVS?

TL;DR

Don't store the .bundle directory in source. It's intended to be a local cache of certain bundler settings and flags, rather than something shared between all project contributors.

Analysis

There are some arguments for and against storing your Gemfile.lock in source control, but the contents of the .bundle directory are not intended to be shared across multiple users/machines within a project. The only potential use case for tracking .bundle/config is to remember certain flags across runs in a production or testing branch, but that behavior is deprecated anyway.

Pragmatically, storing the .bundle directory may lead to unintended flag usage by your fellow developers. This is likely to lead to unnecessary debugging efforts, and potentially-surprising behavior for project contributors. A Rake task or setup/deployment script is a better option for handling Bundler flags, especially as this behavior is deprecated and is scheduled to go away in Bundler 3.

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