Uninstall old versions of Ruby gems

Question

I have several versions of a Ruby gem:

$ gem list
rjb (1.3.4, 1.3.3, 1.1.9)

How can I remove old versions but keep the most recent?

score 731 · Accepted Answer · edited Dec 28 '13 at 23:39

731

# remove all old versions of the gem
gem cleanup rjb

# choose which ones you want to remove
gem uninstall rjb

# remove version 1.1.9 only
gem uninstall rjb --version 1.1.9

# remove all versions less than 1.3.4
gem uninstall rjb --version '<1.3.4'

edited Dec 28 '13 at 23:39

Zombo

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answered May 05 '11 at 18:33

Dylan Markow

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Note, in the last command there must be a space after "Less than" operator. – Baurito Mar 25 '22 at 23:05

score 293 · Answer 2 · edited Dec 14 '16 at 07:41

293

For removing older versions of all installed gems, following 2 commands are useful:

 gem cleanup --dryrun

Above command will preview what gems are going to be removed.

 gem cleanup

Above command will actually remove them.

edited Dec 14 '16 at 07:41

Zia Ul Rehman Mughal

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answered Apr 27 '12 at 02:30

ohho

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Doesn't work in my ubuntu cloud9 setup ... have to run with sudo – Mirv - Matt Nov 13 '18 at 16:46
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As of the current version of gem, 3.2.15, I get the following message. The `--dryrun` option has been deprecated and will be removed in future versions of Rubygems. Use `--dry-run` instead – Ahmed Mohamedeen Apr 20 '21 at 19:11
On Rails, I had to run bundle install after these two commands to re-install some gems that went missing such as puma. – Asad Shakil May 23 '22 at 04:16

score 15 · Answer 3 · answered Apr 15 '15 at 07:14

Way to clean out any old versions of gems.

sudo gem cleanup

If you just want to see a list of what would be removed you can use:

sudo gem cleanup -d

You can also cleanup just a specific gem by specifying its name:

sudo gem cleanup gemname

for remove specific version like 1.1.9 only

gem uninstall gemname --version 1.1.9

If you still facing some exception to install gem, like:

invalid gem: package is corrupt, exception while verifying: undefined method `size' for nil:NilClass (NoMethodError) in /home/rails/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.1.1@project/cache/nokogiri-1.6.6.2.gem

the, you can remove it from cache:

rm /home/rails/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.1.1@project/cache/nokogiri-1.6.6.2.gem

For more detail:

http://blog.grepruby.com/2015/04/way-to-clean-up-gem-or-remove-old.html

You probably shouldn't be using `sudo` – Paul Danelli Feb 27 '20 at 15:56 — Paul Danelli, Feb 27 '20 at 15:56

score 13 · Answer 4 · answered May 05 '11 at 18:33

13

Try something like gem uninstall rjb --version 1.3.4.

answered May 05 '11 at 18:33

Daniel O'Hara

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the question was "How can I remove old versions but keep the most recent?" this response would remove the newest version. – austinheiman Oct 06 '17 at 16:40

score 8 · Answer 5 · edited Apr 30 '14 at 00:02

8

gem cleanup uses system commands. Installed gems are just directories in the filesystem. If you want to batch delete, use rm -R.

gem environment and note the value of GEM PATHS
cd <your-gem-paths>/gems
ls -1 |grep rjb- |xargs rm -R

edited Apr 30 '14 at 00:02

eebbesen

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answered Jul 16 '11 at 17:30

Anatoly

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"Installed gems are just directories in the filesystem." good to know, thanks – philant Jul 04 '17 at 06:36

score 1 · Answer 6 · answered Jan 28 '19 at 21:41

You might need to set GEM_HOME for the cleanup to work. You can check what paths exist for gemfiles by running:

gem env

Take note of the GEM PATHS section.

In my case, for example, with gems installed in my user home:

export GEM_HOME="~/.gem/ruby/2.4.0"
gem cleanup

score -1 · Answer 7 · answered Nov 16 '20 at 01:25

-1

bundler clean

Stopped the message showing for me, as a last step after I tried all of the above.

answered Nov 16 '20 at 01:25

Mike

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This doesn't really answer the question: what if Bundler isn't installed or there is no bundle file? – the Tin Man Feb 03 '22 at 19:58

Uninstall old versions of Ruby gems

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