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Comment by bonzoesc | Hacker News Reader

I don't see a pressing need to use RVM in production; when I deploy, I pick a Ruby version and stick with it unless there's a security issue, at which point I pull the updated REE package from Phusion/let Heroku figure it out.

Considering the many times I've seen RVM installs fail due to checked-in broken code, I'd hardly call it "production ready" either.

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> I don't see a pressing need to use RVM in production

1. Gemset isolation comes in handy.

2. Sometimes you want to have multiple ruby versions (e.g. MRI for app and JRuby for memory heavy script)

Debian allows you to install ruby MRI and jruby simultaneously.

Recommending RVM for production use is hilarious.

Recommending debian-ruby for production use is bordering on physical injury.

> Recommending RVM for production use is hilarious.

That's a pretty inflammatory, unsubstantiated opinion. Any reason?

Likely the reason was "to make the joke work."

And also that RVM is a development tool, and the overhead it adds to production is silly.

The complete lack of a changelog doesn't help either. I never know whether something's going to break in a new release and almost every new release has some little semantic change that borks my system.

I have to use rvm in production because debian/ubuntu install ruby 1.8 and I need 1.9.2 for rails 3. Ruby isn't in the alternatives system (yet - coming soon) so I don't see a better way.

Installing 1.9.2 from source if it is in fact not in the repos is far better then using RVM.

Using RVM anywhere is suboptimal, but using it in production is lunacy.

apt-get install ruby1.9. It's in there.

1.9.1 is there, 1.9.2 is not. But I still the the better solution is to build from source on each machine, or create a custom 1.9.2 package for the machines you will be using. As other comments have pointed out, RVM is held together with string and duct tape and breaks frequently. I haven't dug into the code from this project, but being more testable and maintainable would be one of the biggest wins they could achieve from my point of view.

I have to contradict you (unless I'm misunderstanding you): the debian package named ruby1.9.1 is actually 1.9.2. The 1.9.1 refers to the ruby ABI. Blame the ruby devs for breaking the ABI in a minor version update (1.9.0 -> 1.9.[12]).

That's the goal, and that's why rbenv does not perform compilation/installation at all (there's a separate ruby-build project for that: https://github.com/sstephenson/ruby-build).

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