Bundler is Built Into Ruby 2.6.0preview3
/Big Bundler changes are coming for Ruby 2.6 preview 3. No, not the really huge RubyGems 3 and 4 changes. Also not the Bundler 2.0 changes where Gemfile changes name to gems.rb. Those are still in the future, mostly.
No, preview3 is where Bundler got merged into Ruby proper. They’ve been working on it for awhile. When you build the Ruby source code, you get a Bundler executable right inside Ruby. It’s a lot like rdoc or irb now. It can also have better integration with RubyGems, which has been part of core Ruby since Ruby 1.9.
You could be joining your relatives to eat Thanksgiving leftovers as you listen to Uncle Bob’s highly-political take on the US President tear-gassing asylum seekers, or you could be reading arcane Bundler minutiae. I think we both know which is more pleasant.
Some Early Bugs
As you’d expect, there are a few bugs to iron out. While rvm merged a PR for preview3, they didn’t change any of their stubs, which may be interesting in the long term - do you need to install a Bundler gem even though Bundler is built-in? What if they’re different versions?
Rbenv and Ruby-build also allow installing it — I’m not sure they need any special treatment for it, given the way they’re different from rvm.
(For either RVM or ruby-build, you may need to update before installing the new one. That's how you usually make new versions available. And this is a very new version.)
It’s also possible to hardcode some of your Bundler assumptions in a way that gets broken (as, ahem, I do in Rails Ruby Bench.)
Also, their new version numbers seem to be things like “2.a”? Some of the changes are a bit confusing to me.
In general, this is a great time to try upgrading to 2.6.0 preview3 and see whether you see any Bundler-related breakage.
Installing
I use MacOS on my personal laptop, so I’m going through the joys of getting Ruby to use Homebrew’s OpenSSL 1.1 with 1.0 still installed. In other words, mostly it breaks. Here’s what I do with RVM:
rvm install 2.6.0-preview3 -C --with-openssl-dir="$(brew --prefix openssl)"
You can do something very similar in Ruby-Build or rbenv:
RUBY_CONFIGURE_OPTS=--with-openssl-dir="$(brew --prefix openssl)"
Right now RVM insists on installing OpenSSL 1.1, but Ruby doesn’t seem to build with it. OpenSSL has been a giant pain for MacOS (among others) for as long as I can remember. So, y’know, whatever your current coping strategy is, you can use it here too. Mine is only whining in blog posts because I don’t do whiskey.
What It’s Do?
Having both built-in and installed Bundler is likely to be weird… And also very, very common. Below is what I saw when I did that.
First, I built Ruby 2.6.0preview3, which has the new built-in Bundler. I checked the version - and it worked. Yay!
C02RP0G1G8WM:opt noah.gibbs$ bundle --version Bundler version 1.17.1
Okay, so what if I install Bundler as a gem? And with a lower version?
C02RP0G1G8WM:opt noah.gibbs$ gem install bundler -v 1.17.0 Fetching bundler-1.17.0.gem Successfully installed bundler-1.17.0 Parsing documentation for bundler-1.17.0 Installing ri documentation for bundler-1.17.0 Done installing documentation for bundler after 2 seconds 1 gem installed C02RP0G1G8WM:opt noah.gibbs$ bundle --version Bundler version 1.17.0
Interesting! The lower-version gem takes precedence. Presumably that’s due to how RVM and paths work. Can we use the Bundler version-specific stub hack to use a specific version?
C02RP0G1G8WM:opt noah.gibbs$ bundle _1.17.0_ --version Bundler version 1.17.0 C02RP0G1G8WM:opt noah.gibbs$ bundle _1.17.1_ --version Traceback (most recent call last): 2: from /Users/noah.gibbs/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.6.0-preview3/bin/bundle:23:in `' 1: from /Users/noah.gibbs/.rvm/rubies/ruby-2.6.0-preview3/lib/ruby/2.6.0/rubygems.rb:307:in `activate_bin_path' /Users/noah.gibbs/.rvm/rubies/ruby-2.6.0-preview3/lib/ruby/2.6.0/rubygems.rb:288:in `find_spec_for_exe': can't find gem bundler (= 1.17.1) with executable bundle (Gem::GemNotFoundException)
Basically yeah, we can. The built-in 1.17.1 wasn’t installed the same way, and so it doesn’t have a version-specific stub. It’s not a gem, it’s a built-into-Ruby executable like irb or rdoc. And in fact, if we specifically use that binary, we get the built-into-Ruby version of Bundler, not the gem:
C02RP0G1G8WM:opt noah.gibbs$ /Users/noah.gibbs/.rvm/rubies/ruby-2.6.0-preview3/bin/bundle --version Bundler version 1.17.1
That makes sense.
Does it work if I uninstall the gem?
C02RP0G1G8WM:opt noah.gibbs$ gem uninstall bundler Remove executables: bundle, bundler in addition to the gem? [Yn] Y Removing bundle Removing bundler Successfully uninstalled bundler-1.17.0 C02RP0G1G8WM:opt noah.gibbs$ bundler --version Bundler version 1.17.1
Looks good!
What’s My Takeaway?
In no particular order:
As of Ruby 2.6.0preview3, Bundler is part of core Ruby
You can still install Bundler as a gem, and it basically works
If you have a nice new Bundler but it’s getting an old one instead, uninstall the old gem
There will be Bundler bugs in the new year - this change is a good first place to look
Instead of joining your family for holiday conversation, consider testing code with new Ruby, reading lots of my old blog posts, getting unsociably drunk or really anything else… Enjoy the news responsibly and in moderation, though.
Have a joyous holiday season, for a holiday of your choice! I wish you many new Bundler and Ruby features in the coming year.