The whole ruby ecosystem is a nightmare for system administrators. Ubuntu/Debian still ships with ruby 1.8.7 and 1.9.1p0 (which is evil I heard). In order to install a new ruby version one has to most likely compile it from scratch: - Since there are no deb packages and there is no sane way to build deb packages - Overriding system ruby has to be avoided since we manage the whole infrastructure with puppet (yes you c…
Isn't it more Ubuntu/Debian's fault for shipping outdated versions of ruby than it is the ruby ecosystem's fault for simply having older versions ?
This is why it's not realistic to expect to use the system ruby for development: that's not what it's there for.
It's also worth noting that the version of Ruby in current Debian Stable (which is 1.9.3-p194) will in all likelihood be deprecated by ruby-core 2 years before the next Debian Stable release. Again, this is fine for Debian, because they have taken on the responsibility of keeping working the user applications which rely on the system ruby.
If you're complaining about the system ruby being so out of date that you can't develop applications on it, you're doing it wrong. The system ruby isn't for you.