gem

Use #gem to activate a specific version of gem_name.

requirements is a list of version requirements that the specified gem must match, most commonly â= example.version.numberâ. See Gem::Requirement for how to specify a version requirement.

If you will be activating the latest version of a gem, there is no need to call #gem, Kernel#require will do the right thing for you.

#gem returns true if the gem was activated, otherwise false. If the gem could not be found, didn't match the version requirements, or a different version was already activated, an exception will be raised.

#gem should be called before any require statements (otherwise RubyGems may load a conflicting library version).

In older RubyGems versions, the environment variable GEM_SKIP could be used to skip activation of specified gems, for example to test out changes that haven't been installed yet. Now RubyGems defers to -I and the RUBYLIB environment variable to skip activation of a gem.

Example:

GEM_SKIP=libA:libB ruby -I../libA -I../libB ./mycode.rb