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Most rubyists might be shocked when they'll read this, but I'd like to know if it's possible to completely remove the Ruby framework as well as all the tools and gems that ship with Mac OS X 10.6.4.

Any help would be appreciated. (And explanations too if you think I'd rather not do this)

Thanks

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Just out of curiosity - why remove it? It's not exactly intrusive. Are you extremely short on disk space or something? – Matt Sep 29 '10 at 14:34
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I'm in agreement with other posters. Unless you've extremely short on disk space, I'd leave it go. It's possible there may be some underlying dependency that could be broken if you remove Ruby. – Brad Sep 29 '10 at 15:48
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If you mess with files in the /System/ directory, you deserve whatever evils befall you. Just don't do it. – ghoppe Sep 30 '10 at 17:59
It's easy to see what will be affected by removing the system Ruby. From the command-line type: find /usr -type f -name \*.rb. That will be one thing that is affected. Applications could expect ruby in /usr/bin also, and they will fail. In general, it's not a good idea to mess with executables in /usr/bin, /sbin or /usr/sbin. – Greg Nov 22 '11 at 23:32
@Greg You do realize that ruby files don't need a .rb extension? – Daniel Beck♦ Dec 5 '11 at 18:53
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up vote 3 down vote accepted

Just delete /System/Library/Frameworks/Ruby.framework, /Library/Ruby, and erb, gem, irb, rdoc, ri, ruby, and testrb from /usr/bin.

Warning: OS X expects and sometimes relies on frameworks and software shipped with the system. It would be a very bad idea to remove the system Ruby. It might even get replaced next time you update OS X -- or it might not, but OS X might expect it to be there, and then bad things will happen. Remove it at your own risk. I am providing this answer because you asked, but I would not recommend removing a system framework.

Why do you want to remove it? It's not hurting anything to sit there, unused.

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Thanks guys, will not remove Ruby or Python :) – just_a_dude Oct 1 '10 at 12:53
I just removed it -- bundle from rvm would use site Ruby for some reason and this fixed it. – Vojto May 2 '11 at 5:28

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