I'm having a strange error with RubyGems when specifying a repository in a
subdir of my home directory (RubyGems itself was installed globally).

First, here is my .bashrc:
 export RUBYOPT=rubygems
(no GEM_* variables defined).

I run the following (for example to install ruvi, but the same error is
occuring with others packages, like rake, ...):

 eric@localhost ~ $ gem install ruvi
 Attempting local installation of 'ruvi'
 Local gem file not found: ruvi*.gem
 Attempting remote installation of 'ruvi'
 Updating Gem source index for: http://gems.rubyforge.org
 ERROR:  While executing gem ... (Errno::EACCES)
     Permission denied - /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/cache/ruvi-0.4.12.gem

Ok. Seems quite logical, I don't have rw access to the global repository.
So, I created ~/.gemrc as follow:

 gemhome: /home/eric/.gems
 gempath:
  - /home/eric/.gems
  - /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8
 gem: --gen-rdoc --run-tests

Now, retrying:

 eric@localhost ~ $ gem install ruvi
 Attempting local installation of 'ruvi'
 Local gem file not found: ruvi*.gem
 Attempting remote installation of 'ruvi'
 Updating Gem source index for: http://gems.rubyforge.org
 Successfully installed ruvi-0.4.12

Ok, it was installed succesfully ('gemhome' setting used). But:

 eric@localhost ~ $ ruvi
 /usr/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/rubygems.rb:204:in `report_activate_error':
Could  not find RubyGem ruvi (> 0) (Gem::LoadError)
         from /usr/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/rubygems.rb:141:in `activate'
         from /usr/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/rubygems.rb:37:in
`require_gem_with_options'
         from /usr/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/rubygems.rb:31:in `require_gem'
         from /home/eric/.gems/bin/ruvi:17

It seems 'gempath' is not properly used. Finally, if I try:

 export GEM_PATH=/home/eric/.gems

then ruvi is working properly!
So, any idea why this is not working with the 'gempath' as specified in my
.gemrc ?

Thank you in advance,