So, there’s a new way to use multiple versions of languages, such as Ruby, on RHEL, without breaking the system.  I’ve got this down, so I thought I should share it.

In this case, it’s replacing the need for RVM, and moving to a much more standardized system.  I don’t love can’t stand having GCC installed on production servers, so this is much better.

SCL – Software Collections :)

The goal of this was to get a recent version of Fog working on RHEL 6 / Centos 6.

First:  get the SCL repo:

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cd /etc/yum.repos.d`
wget http://people.redhat.com/bkabrda/scl_ruby193.repo

That gives you the basics, but we also need to get some pieces for Fog, compiled for SCL. Thanks to the Katello Project, which is packaging Fog for use w/ Foreman, we can add their repo. You’ll have to make a repo for this, though:

http://fedorapeople.org/groups/katello/releases/yum/foreman-nightly/RHEL/6Server/x86_64/

—You could probably use that as your repo for ruby_193, even without the above scl repo.

This is what the repo file would look like:

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[foreman-nightly]
name=Foreman Nightly
baseurl=http://fedorapeople.org/groups/katello/releases/yum/foreman-nightly/RHEL/6Server/x86_64/
enabled=1
gpgcheck=0

Now, install ruby_193:

yum install ruby193-ruby ruby193-rubygem-fog   ruby193-rubygem-rbvmomi

Now, you can use it:

scl enable ruby193 bash
which ruby

One thing, if you want to use ruby_193 inside scripts, you can use a stub for it:

/usr/bin/ruby193-ruby