Running Ruby from usr/bin instead of usr/local/bin?

So I was following the steps on Hivelogic to get ruby on rails setup on my machine. After compiling and installing, I used the which ruby command to double check it installed in the right place. It did not. I was able to install the Rails and MySQL gems though, but both POW and localhost:3000 don't work.

Is there anything wrong with having it in the usr/bin directory 开发者_运维知识库instead of usr/local/bin? My usr/local/bin is practically empty, but usr/bin has a ton of files in it.

Edit: I reinstalled ruby to usr/local/bin but now Rails won't install. Is it a problem that it's already installed in usr/bin?

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That page is a few years old. The current best practice for Mac and Linux is to use rvm. You can see, even Hivelogic uses rvm now (though I'm not sure how I feel about installing it system wide).

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Anything that recommends installing from source as the first option instead of a last-resort fallback is probably bad advice. It's better to install using a package manager like MacPorts or Homebrew both of which have current versions of Ruby 1.8 and 1.9.

MacPorts installs everything in /opt specifically to avoid conflict with system files. From time to time Apple will distribute an update that patches ruby and this can mess up anything you have in the way of dependencies if you've been using a modified /usr/bin/ruby. Generally the system ruby is supposed to be left as-is.

You can replace the "compile ruby" step with an installer like that and save yourself a lot of trouble in the future. Just be sure to have /opt/local/bin as one of the first items in your PATH just as you would for other solutions.

Since installing Ruby and Rails and some kind of database can be a confusing process, it seems like there should be a meta-installer to help you through the process.

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So I finally managed to get rails installed in the correct spot. I had to change the line in my .profile to export PATH="/usr/local/bin:$PATH" and then do a sudo gem update --system after installing rubygems before rails could actually be installed.

RVM and Homebrew did not help at all.

EDIT: Since people have a problem with this answer, I'm giving an update. I have since installed RVM and am liking it, but only because I have a friend I ask all my questions to, as RVM is really confusing if you're not used to doing a lot on the command line. I needed help from him to install it because I didn't have any of the bash files, and thought they were hiding somewhere. If you're missing the bash files, just create them yourself. This took a long time to get working, but now I apparently have it setup right.