how to determine where a gem's files are installed

[Brian Sammon]

How do I determine where a gem's files are installed?

"gem spec" gives relative paths, and I can't figure out what they're relative
to.
"gem contents" says the package can't be found, even though "gem list" shows
it.

I'm not entirely sure what to expect from "gem spec" and "gem contents".

If it's relevant, I'm running Debian Linux.

[Joseph Method]

They're here: /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems

--
-J. Method

[Brian Sammon]

> How do I determine where a gem's files are installed?
>
> "gem spec" gives relative paths, and I can't figure out what they're relative
> to.

I've discovered that "gem environment" answers this question. It tells you
the base path that gems are installed to.

Further wonderings:
Does rubygems have an installed-package database like RPM?
If you use the "--install-dir" argument to the "gem install" command to
install a gem in a non-standard place, does rubygems keep track of the
nonstandard location so it knows how to uninstall it?

[Andrew Chen]

gem list --local

will tell you what gems are installed.

To uninstall, I would just delete gems from the installed directory (?)

~Andrew Chen