You should use
apt-get
- If you care about uninstalling gems with their dependencies. RubyGems will not uninstall unused dependencies. See do-i-have-to-manually-uninstall-all-dependent-gems. If you care about uninstalling gems as a group,
rvm
is also an option (see below). - If that gem would or should install executables in
/usr/bin
. - If you want to upgrade gems together with the rest of the system (automatically)
gem
- If you want the most simple approach
- If you want to have multiple versions of a gem available on the system
- Need very recent or very old versions of some gems
- Want to install only for one user
bundler
- If you want to install certain gems only for one application
rvm + gem
- If you need different sets of gems installed or removed independently
You should not mix between using apt-get
and gem
arbitrarily. That means you should not, but when you do; you should know and remember why you did this.
When you use different methods, the overall system gets more complex.