Do I have to manually uninstall all dependent gems?

ruby-on-rails ruby rubygems dependencies

31,421

Solution 1

As far as I know you're correct, there is not an easy way built-in to the gem command to do this.

However, you can check out gem-prune which can help clean up your gem repository after you've removed dm-core.

http://github.com/ddollar/gem-prune/tree/master

Solution 2

gem list | cut -d" " -f1 | xargs gem uninstall -aIx deletes all installed ruby gems!

Solution 3

for gem in `gem list --no-version`; do
  gem uninstall -aIx $gem
done

Works the best for me, not sure why but

gem list | cut -d" " -f1 | xargs gem uninstall -aIx

doesn't work on my system as it still complains...

ERROR:  While executing gem ... (Gem::InstallError)
    cannot uninstall, check `gem list -d some-gem-here`

Solution 4

gem cleanup should do the trick. See here for details.

Solution 5

I ended up making a simple command line tool to gem uninstall dependencies recursively.

I also filed a rubygems issue to gem uninstall dependencies recursively.

That rubygems issue was closed and will not be considered until somebody provides a patch including tests.

View more solutions

31,421

Hola

Updated on January 29, 2020

Comments

Hola over 4 years

I tried to uninstall datamapper using the command gem uninstall dm-core.

But it seems that a whole bunch of dependent gems also need to be uninstalled.

C:\>gem uninstall dm-core

You have requested to uninstall the gem:
        dm-core-0.9.11
dm-migrations-0.9.11 depends on [dm-core (= 0.9.11)]
dm-cli-0.9.11 depends on [dm-core (= 0.9.11)]
dm-serializer-0.9.11 depends on [dm-core (= 0.9.11)]
dm-timestamps-0.9.11 depends on [dm-core (= 0.9.11)]
dm-aggregates-0.9.11 depends on [dm-core (= 0.9.11)]
dm-types-0.9.11 depends on [dm-core (= 0.9.11)]
dm-is-tree-0.9.11 depends on [dm-core (= 0.9.11)]
dm-observer-0.9.11 depends on [dm-core (= 0.9.11)]
dm-validations-0.9.11 depends on [dm-core (= 0.9.11)]
If you remove this gems, one or more dependencies will not be met.
Continue with Uninstall? [Yn]  n
ERROR:  While executing gem ... (Gem::DependencyRemovalException)
    Uninstallation aborted due to dependent gem(s)

I tried finding documentation on "gem uninstall" but there doesn't seem to be a way to uninstall the dependencies automatically:

C:\>gem help uninstall
Usage: gem uninstall GEMNAME [GEMNAME ...] [options]

  Options:
    -a, --[no-]all                   Uninstall all matching versions
    -I, --[no-]ignore-dependencies   Ignore dependency requirements while
                                     uninstalling
    -x, --[no-]executables           Uninstall applicable executables with
out
                                     confirmation
    -i, --install-dir DIR            Directory to uninstall gem from
    -n, --bindir DIR                 Directory to remove binaries from
        --[no-]user-install          Uninstall from user's home directory
                                     in addition to GEM_HOME.
    -v, --version VERSION            Specify version of gem to uninstall
        --platform PLATFORM          Specify the platform of gem to uninst
all

  Common Options:
    -h, --help                       Get help on this command
    -V, --[no-]verbose               Set the verbose level of output
    -q, --quiet                      Silence commands
        --config-file FILE           Use this config file instead of defau
lt
        --backtrace                  Show stack backtrace on errors
        --debug                      Turn on Ruby debugging


  Arguments:
    GEMNAME       name of gem to uninstall

  Summary:
    Uninstall gems from the local repository

  Defaults:
    --version '>= 0' --no-force --install-dir C:/Ruby18/lib/ruby/gems/1.8
    --user-install

C:\>

Am I missing something?

iPadDevloperJr over 13 years

That is actually neat, but more so because I wasn't familiar with the 'cut' command. :) Thanks for showing me!
Romain Champourlier almost 13 years

Nice! To remove rails3.1.0.rc4 dependencies, I used this one inspired from Bruno's: gem list | grep .rc4 | cut -d" " -f1 | xargs gem uninstall -aIx -v 3.1.0.rc4
ma11hew28 almost 13 years

cut is neat! Here is a gem uninstall dependency recursive solution.
ma11hew28 almost 13 years

FYI, this doesn't look recursive. It only appears to go down one level, i.e., uninstall the direct dependencies, but not the dependencies of the dependencies, etc. Here is a gem uninstall dependency recursive solution.
Nek almost 12 years

OS X Lion version: gem list | cut -d" " -f1 | xargs sudo gem uninstall -aIx
Todd A. Jacobs about 10 years

Calling xargs -n1 will prevent the invocation from stopping when it can't remove default gems for a given Ruby.
Segfault about 9 years

FYI, gem-prune is no longer maintained and not compatible with latest versions.
Seph about 9 years

Yup, I will never, ever, ever install anything that has dependencies using gem. Nope.
RajaRaviVarma over 7 years

Without deleting the default gems: gem list | cut -d" " -f1 | grep -vE '(rdoc|psych|io-console|bigdecimal|json)' | xargs gem uninstall -aIx
buncis almost 7 years

its uninstall almost all my gem, not only that begins with "opener-"
Kyrremann about 5 years

This just removed old versions of gems, not dependencies.
paul about 5 years

It deleted all gems except the few which has default written besides them like bigdecimal (default: 1.3.2).