Hacker News Reader

Comment by astrodust | Hacker News Reader

You can do it without root if you take precautions, but the default is to use root.

Depends on the system. The default on Arch Linux is local gem installs:

    $ cat /etc/gemrc
    # --user-install is used to install to $HOME/.gem/ by default since we want to separate
    #                pacman installed gems and gem installed gems
    gem: --user-install

That's a nice touch and some good work on the part of the package maintainer. Most (Ubuntu, RedHat, etc.) do not, they just expect you to sudo everything.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com