Uninstall all installed gems, in OSX?

Question

There are instances where I would like to revert and uninstall all previous gem installations.

For instance, I needed to assist a friend migrate their rails development machine to use RVM. As they had been previously using the system-wide gem, he was experiencing many headaches when working with multiple projects. Essentially, he was the poster-child for an RVM convert.

How can I elegantly uninstall all of the gems on his OSX system?

Nowadays this is unnecessary. RVM knows where to look for the gems after you switch to the right Ruby version. — Franklin Yu, Jan 26 '17 at 07:27
Just a quick note to @FranklinYu - this is not always the case. I've had instances where a globally installed copy of Nokogiri seemed to always be taking precedent over the RVM gemset, and the global one *had* to be uninstalled. — Nathan Crause, Aug 07 '19 at 17:46
@NathanCrause Then it’s a bug in RVM and should be reported. I’m pretty sure this isn’t the intended behavior of RVM. — Franklin Yu, Aug 07 '19 at 18:14
@FranklinYu you're right, but until such an issue is resolved, there would still be the need for a way to purge all gems. I was only referring to the point of it being "unnecessary", which would be true in an ideal situation, but hey, things go sideways all the time. — Nathan Crause, Aug 08 '19 at 18:58

score 469 · Answer 1 · edited Jan 22 '18 at 17:57

469

Rubygems >= 2.1.0

gem uninstall -aIx

a removes all versions
I ignores dependencies
x includes executables

Rubgems < 2.1.0

for i in `gem list --no-versions`; do gem uninstall -aIx $i; done

edited Jan 22 '18 at 17:57

grizzthedj

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answered Nov 11 '11 at 14:18

crftr

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Duh, you beat me to the speed :) – Romain Nov 11 '11 at 14:20
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Then of course, you'll want to re-install a sane list of default gems which for me is: "gem install bundler json minitest rake rdoc" – Wil Moore III May 02 '12 at 08:33
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gem list | cut -d" " -f1 | sudo xargs gem uninstall -Iax -worked for me – lesyk May 28 '12 at 13:10
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Does not work: `ERROR: While executing gem ... (Gem::InstallError) gem "test-unit" cannot be uninstalled because it is a default gem` (gem 2.0.3) – M. Anthony Aiello Sep 03 '13 at 19:39
@Anthony Though this is a bit dangerous, you can suppress errors with `for i in \`gem list --no-versions\`; do gem uninstall -aIx $i 2>/dev/null; done` – Darren Cheng Mar 10 '14 at 19:46
Just added sudo `for i in `sudo gem list --no-versions`; do sudo gem uninstall -aIx $i; done` – sarat Jan 29 '15 at 16:10
Please mention `sudo` since OP mentioned system-wide `gem` in OS X. – Franklin Yu Jan 26 '17 at 07:27
Hey, I'm writing a guide on this topic. Has anyone on gem < 2.1.0 tried [this bash script](https://gist.github.com/stilist/256d6e1684f7e9d9f4e660655d1bab64) to work around the errors? – evan.bovie Dec 02 '21 at 00:03

bswinnerton · Accepted Answer · 2016-04-07T19:26:41.783

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You could also build out a new Gemfile and run bundle clean --force. This will remove all other gems that aren't included in the new Gemfile.

edited Apr 07 '16 at 19:26

answered Dec 19 '12 at 15:04

bswinnerton

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best answer because test-unit cannot be uninstalled and kills the process. – westonplatter Jul 11 '13 at 05:36
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Yes, this is the best answer. I feel OP should choose this post 2.0.0. – theTuxRacer Jul 07 '14 at 17:06
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This is certainly working for me and much more elegant than other versions – Crispen Smith Feb 05 '15 at 02:38
This is a great technique. Just what I needed. – matt Mar 08 '21 at 07:03

Thiago Ganzarolli · Answer 3 · 2012-09-28T18:40:22.370

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A slighest different version, skipping the cut step, taking advantage of the '--no-version' option:

gem list --no-version |xargs gem uninstall -ax

Since you are removing everything, I don't see the need for the 'I' option. Whenever the gem is removed, it's fine.

edited Sep 28 '12 at 18:40

answered Feb 14 '12 at 07:07

Thiago Ganzarolli

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`sudo` shouldn't be necessary if the gems were installed by an ordinary user. – May 20 '12 at 19:09
See my answer for a reason why I downvoted. I wanted to comment here but comments do not allow lines... – aercolino Sep 28 '12 at 17:03
good, can remove a lot of gems, but something dosen`t it like bundle, rake, rvm – coolesting May 09 '14 at 02:56
Very elegant but fails due to the inability to remove default gems. Suggest crftr's solution instead – Freedom_Ben Mar 18 '15 at 22:41

score 14 · Answer 4 · answered Jun 18 '16 at 22:18

14

First make sure you have at least gem version 2.1.0

gem update --system
gem --version
# 2.6.4

To uninstall simply run:

gem uninstall --all

You may need to use the sudo command:

sudo gem uninstall --all

answered Jun 18 '16 at 22:18

typo

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score 11 · Answer 5 · answered Sep 28 '12 at 16:49

11

Use either

$ gem list --no-version | xargs gem uninstall -ax

or

$ sudo gem list --no-version | xargs sudo gem uninstall -ax

Depending on what you want, you may need to execute both, because "gem list" and "sudo gem list" provide independent lists.

Do not mix a normal "gem list" with a sudo-ed "gem uninstall" nor the other way around otherwise you may end up uninstalling sudo-installed gems (former) or getting a lot of errors (latter).

answered Sep 28 '12 at 16:49

aercolino

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You are right, I edited my answer to exclude sudo. For both versions users can rely on your answer. – Thiago Ganzarolli Sep 28 '12 at 18:41

score 10 · Answer 6 · edited Feb 02 '16 at 15:35

10

If you are using Rubygems version 2.1.0 or later, you can try: gem uninstall --all.

edited Feb 02 '16 at 15:35

Edward

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answered Mar 03 '15 at 21:57

Alessandro

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It should be 'gem' not 'gems'. – typo Jun 18 '16 at 22:20

score 9 · Answer 7 · answered Jan 29 '16 at 04:04

Rubygems >= 2.1.0

gem uninstall -aIx

If Terminal returns below error

ERROR:  While executing gem ... (Gem::FilePermissionError)
You don't have write permissions for the /Library/Ruby/Gems/2.0.0 directory.

Then write above command as below

sudo gem uninstall -aIx

And enter your mac os account password Done!!

score 9 · Answer 8 · answered Sep 25 '17 at 22:06

And for those of you who are here because you want to remove all gems with a certain prefix (ahem I'm looking at you aws-sdk!) you can run something like this:

gem list --no-version | grep "aws-sdk-" | xargs gem uninstall -aIx

Obviously put in your query instead of aws-sdk-. You need the -I in there to ignore dependencies.

Adopted form Ando's earlier answer

Haris Krajina · Answer 9 · 2013-03-04T09:41:39.277

7

If you like doing it using ruby:

ruby -e "`gem list`.split(/$/).each { |line| puts `gem uninstall -Iax #{line.split(' ')[0]}` unless line.strip.empty? }"

Cheers

edited Mar 04 '13 at 09:41

answered Nov 21 '12 at 10:46

Haris Krajina

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I am getting an error with this: ERROR: While executing gem ... (Gem::CommandLineError) Please specify at least one gem name (e.g. gem build GEMNAME) – mbdev Mar 03 '13 at 21:19
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@mbdev Fixed, hehe providing support to my answers on Stack Overflow :) – Haris Krajina Mar 04 '13 at 09:42
This is handy in that it works in Windows where the command shell is... not good. – AdamC Sep 02 '15 at 20:11

Attenzione · Answer 10 · 2013-06-26T08:43:29.480

5

The only command helped me to cleanup all gems and ignores default gems, which can't be uninstalled

for x in `gem list --no-versions`; do gem uninstall $x -a -x -I; done

edited Jun 26 '13 at 08:43

answered Apr 22 '13 at 15:34

Attenzione

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score 3 · Answer 11 · answered Nov 11 '11 at 14:19

I did that not too long ago (same poster-child RVM switcher situation):

gem list | cut -d" " -f1 | sudo xargs gem uninstall -Iax

Takes the list of all gems (incl. version stuff), cuts it to keep only the gem name, then uninstalls all versions of such gems.

The sudo is only useful if you had gems installed system-wide, and should not be included unless necessary.

Zaz · Answer 12 · 2015-01-06T01:08:21.270

When trying to remove gems installed as root, xargs seems to halt when it encounters an error trying to uninstall a default gem:

sudo gem list | cut -d" " -f1 | xargs gem uninstall -aIx
# ERROR:  While executing gem ... (Gem::InstallError)
#    gem "test-unit" cannot be uninstalled because it is a default gem

This won't work for everyone, but here's what I used instead:

sudo for gem (`gem list | cut -d" " -f1`); do gem uninstall $gem -aIx; done

score 2 · Answer 13 · answered Jul 25 '17 at 06:04

gem list --no-version | grep -v -e 'psych' -e 'rdoc' -e 'openssl' -e 'json' -e 'io-console' -e 'bigdecimal' | xargs sudo gem uninstall -ax

grep here is excluding default gems. All other gems will be uninstalled. You can also precede it with sudo in case you get permission issues.

Uninstall all installed gems, in OSX?

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