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POWhat are the advantages of RVM on linux?
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  1. POWhat are the advantages of RVM on linux?
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    copied!<p>Please understand that I'm not trying to bash RVM. I would just like to understand why it's so popular in the Ruby community.</p> <p>There appears to be two main reasons to use RVM - to manage/switch between different versions of Ruby, and to manage a specific gemset per project. However there seem to be much cleaner ways of achieving the same thing on linux:</p> <ul> <li>I can install different ruby versions from the repositories through the regular package manager, or build from source and install as a package. I can switch between versions using update-alternatives (on Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora at least).</li> <li>I can use Bundler to manage sets of gems for different projects, as outlined in <a href="http://ryan.mcgeary.org/2011/02/09/vendor-everything-still-applies/" rel="nofollow">this blog post</a>.</li> </ul> <p>Given the above, I'm confused as to why I would want to use RVM to manage Ruby versions and gems. The idea of using a bash script to install software on my system outside the package manager feels very hackish, a feeling backed up by <a href="http://www.lucas-nussbaum.net/blog/?p=550" rel="nofollow">this blog post</a>.</p> <p>Not being a Mac user I am totally guessing here, but I thought it might be that OS X is very popular in the Ruby community. If there is no system like update-alternatives for switching ruby versions on OS X, RVM might be the best solution and this idea has carried over to linux too.. like I said, this is just a guess.</p> <p>So why is RVM so popular, and why should I prefer it over the regular package manager + Bundler on Debian or Ubuntu?</p>
 

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