Installing Ruby with Homebrew

Question

I'm trying to install Ruby 1.9 using Homebrew. I'm using Mac OS X Lion, so Ruby 1.8.7 is installed by default.

I've got Homebrew installed at /usr/local/bin/brew (well that's what it says if I run 'which brew')

It seems to be using the Ruby located in /usr/bin/ruby (again, from 'which ruby')

I've read tons of suggestions saying I should do something to the path variable; mine looks like this:

/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/X11/bin:/opt/local/bin:/usr/local/bin/brew

Where am I going wrong? Why is the Homebrew version of Ruby not being used?

Answer 1

Bash checks all folders in $PATH for the first one containing the application you're looking for.

In some file (~/.profile, ~/.bashrc, ~/.bash_profilewill be a line adding/usr/local/bin` to your $PATH. It will look like this:

export PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/bin

Change the order to

export PATH=/usr/local/bin:$PATH

Now, the operating system will look into /usr/local/bin/ and use ruby from homebrew instead the system's native one.