The gem exec command gives me hope for Ruby in a world of fast software

Details

As more and more software is being developed quickly by LLMs, I’m seeing this “fast software” as akin to “fast fashion”. I’m seeing more people gravitate to Python and JavaScript as the common language for their scripts and one-off commands. I think it’s because of the simplicity and ease of sharing these scripts with one-click-copy-and-run commands powered by npx and uvx.

I personally gravitate toward Ruby as my lingua franca and while the rubygems ecosystem is loving and healthy, I saw the friction imposed by explicitly installing gems to be slowing that adoption in an LLM-driven world. But behold! The community has already seen this as well and we have an equivalent in gem exec (initial pushback, then RFC, then implementation) that is available today.

This is going to revitalize my commitment to making more of my utilities (like I’ve been doing recently) into public gems that can be shared and distributed. I’ve already got a couple in mind (incubating in my dotfiles bin commands) that I’d love to demo and document with this executable distribution.

Details

Usage: gem exec [options --] COMMAND [args] [options]

  Options:
    -v, --version VERSION            Specify version of gem to exec
        --[no-]prerelease            Allow prerelease versions of a gem
                                     to be installed
    -g, --gem GEM                    run the executable from the given gem


  Install/Update Options:
        --conservative               Prefer the most recent installed version, 
                                     rather than the latest version overall


  Common Options:
    -h, --help                       Get help on this command
    -V, --[no-]verbose               Set the verbose level of output
    -q, --quiet                      Silence command progress meter
        --silent                     Silence RubyGems output
        --config-file FILE           Use this config file instead of default
        --backtrace                  Show stack backtrace on errors
        --debug                      Turn on Ruby debugging
        --norc                       Avoid loading any .gemrc file


  Arguments:
    COMMAND  the executable command to run

  Summary:
    Run a command from a gem

  Description:
    The exec command handles installing (if necessary) and running an executable
    from a gem, regardless of whether that gem is currently installed.
    
    The exec command can be thought of as a shortcut to running `gem install`
    and
    then the executable from the installed gem.
    
    For example, `gem exec rails new .` will run `rails new .` in the current
    directory, without having to manually run `gem install rails`.
    Additionally, the exec command ensures the most recent version of the gem
    is used (unless run with `--conservative`), and that the gem is not
    installed
    to the same gem path as user-installed gems.

  Defaults:
    --version '>= 0'

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www.joshbeckman.org/blog/practicing/the-gem-exec-command-gives-me-hope-for-ruby-in-a-world-of-fast-software