Update RubyGems to a specific version (for legacy system installs)

gistfile1.txt

How to update RubyGems to a specific version

RubyGems can update itself to the latest version:

gem update --system
However, you always get the newest version. This may be a problem if you’re trying to replicate a known-good environment: for example, the output format of `gem list` in RubyGems 1.3.7 breaks Chef 0.8.16 in certain circumstances. 1.3.6 is fine.

Here’s how to update to a specific version—in this case, 1.3.6:

gem install -v 1.3.6 rubygems-update && \
ruby `gem env gemdir`/gems/rubygems-update-1.3.6/setup.rb
It’s also possible to revert RubyGems to an older version using this method.

(And if you’re wondering why I don’t just install the version I want, well, Ruby Enterprise Edition comes with RubyGems already. I’d prefer to update that than to install another copy.)

For the record, these days you can simply supply the version to gem update --system

gem update --system 2.7.8

For Ruby 2.7:

gem update --system 3.4.22