Using Bundler 0.9.4 with Rails 2.3.5

Posted by Christopher Rigor on February 11, 2010 
Filed Under Ruby on Rails

Bundler works well with rails 3 beta but it doesn’t work with rails 2.3.5 yet. Here’s a simple way to use the gems installed by bundler.

Let’s create a rails app named labs.

$ rails labs
$ cd labs
$ ./script/console
Missing the Rails 2.3.5 gem. Please `gem install -v=2.3.5 rails`, update your RAILS_GEM_VERSION setting in config/environment.rb for the Rails version you do have installed, or comment out RAILS_GEM_VERSION to use the latest version installed

As you can see, the rails 2.3.5 gem is missing. We will use bundler to install the gems to vendor/bundler_gems.

$ vi Gemfile

source "http://gemcutter.org"
gem "rails", "2.3.5"
gem "sqlite3-ruby", :require => "sqlite3"

$ bundle install vendor/bundler_gems
Fetching source index from http://gemcutter.org
Resolving dependencies
Installing actionmailer (2.3.5) from rubygems repository at http://gemcutter.org
Installing actionpack (2.3.5) from rubygems repository at http://gemcutter.org
Installing activerecord (2.3.5) from rubygems repository at http://gemcutter.org
Installing activeresource (2.3.5) from rubygems repository at http://gemcutter.org
Installing activesupport (2.3.5) from rubygems repository at http://gemcutter.org
Installing rack (1.0.1) from rubygems repository at http://gemcutter.org
Installing rails (2.3.5) from rubygems repository at http://gemcutter.org
Installing rake (0.8.7) from rubygems repository at http://gemcutter.org
Installing sqlite3-ruby (1.2.5) from rubygems repository at http://gemcutter.org with native extensions
Your bundle is complete!

$ ./script/console
Missing the Rails 2.3.5 gem. Please `gem install -v=2.3.5 rails`, update your RAILS_GEM_VERSION setting in config/environment.rb for the Rails version you do have installed, or comment out RAILS_GEM_VERSION to use the latest version installed

The gem is still missing. Of course, the app doesn’t know where the gems are located.

We used bundler to install the gems, and in the future, we will use bundler to load the gems. Until then, we will use rubygems to load the gems. Create config/preinitializer.rb and set GEM_HOME.

$ vi config/preinitializer.rb

ENV["GEM_HOME"] = File.expand_path('../../vendor/bundler_gems', __FILE__)

$ ./script/console
Loading development environment (Rails 2.3.5)
>> Rails.version
=> "2.3.5"
>> Rack.version
=> "1.0"
>>

Comments

  • Works great for me and integrates with Heroku! Thanks!
  • collintmiller
    This doesn't work for me. Using this strategy loads the wrong versions of gems from my ~/.gem directory. It is in fact very much like not using bundler at all.
  • crigor
    We're not using bundler to load the gems, we only use it to install them. Thus, you might encounter dependency resolution issues.

    Can you try changing config/preinitializer.rb to

    bundler_gems = File.expand_path('../../vendor/bundler_gems/gems', __FILE__)
    if File.exist?(bundler_gems)
    Dir["#{bundler_gems}/*/lib"].each { |path| $:.unshift(path) }
    end

    Then use require 'active_merchant', instead of gem 'activemerchant'.
  • julian7
    Well, easy, and not portable.
  • crigor
    What do you mean by not portable?
  • julian7
    If you develop your code on a different os than the one you use for deployment, you won't be able to deploy vendor/bundler_gems. You have an option for this in bundler, called 'bundle pack', but otherwise you don't have to do that.
  • Etienne Vallette d'Osia
    Easy and clean, I like it :-)
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