ruby / ruby/rubygems

Allow self-update via regular install/update commands

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#7,316 3 comments 1 reaction 0 assignees View on GitHub

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Dominant language
Ruby
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Merged PRs (30d)
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Description

Today, upgrading RubyGems and Bundler requires "special" commands (gem update --system and bundle update --bundler, respectively).

It would improve the user experience if upgrading used the same commands to upgrade other gems. This would not only make it easier to remember how to upgrade, it would also get us more in line with other package managers, like pip (pip upgrade pip) and npm (npm install npm).

I propose we handle gem install gem and gem update gem, installing the latest version of RubyGems.

I also propose we allow bundle update bundler as a way to both 1) install the newest Bundler version (e.g. gem install bundler), and also 2) update the Bundler version used by the current Gemfile (e.g. bundle update --bundler).

Open questions:

  1. Should we also handle gem install rubygems and gem update rubygems?
  2. Should we also handle bundle update bundle?
  3. Should we deprecate the existing update commands, or just leave them there for anyone who still remembers them?

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

Review the existing gem install, gem update, and bundle update command paths, including the special RubyGems and Bundler update commands named in the issue. Resolve the three open questions about accepted names, Bundler behavior, and deprecation. Done means regular install/update commands provide the proposed self-update behavior without breaking existing commands.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
ruby
Domain
cli, tooling
Issue type
Feature
Difficulty
5/5
Estimated time
Over a week
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Needs clarification
Newbie friendliness
35/100

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