"You don't have write permissions for the /usr/bin directory." when installing Sass using the Gem command

Question

I'm on Mac and I'm trying to install Sass using the command in terminal, "sudo gem install sass". I then enter my password, and everything works fine until this pops up,

"ERROR: While executing gem ... (Gem::FilePermissionError) You don't have write permissions for the /usr/bin directory."

I do use sudo, but it still doesn't work, and it's one of those things that you can't give yourself read & write permissions to. Any ideas?

Thanks,

Wade

Solution 1

/usr/bin is protected by system integrity protection and is not writeable by anybody even root. You need to run:

sudo gem install -n /usr/local/bin sass

to install into a writeable directory

Solution 2

For generamba:

sudo gem install -n /usr/local/bin generamba

Solution 3

I used the same for bundler.

sudo gem install -n /usr/local/bin bundler.

It works.

Solution 4

For CocoaPods:

sudo gem install -n /usr/local/bin cocoapods

View more solutions

Comments

[Dimitri]

I'm not sure this is the best solution. What if you want to install it system wide?

[Alan Birtles]

@Dimitri /usr/local is system wide, it's where you are supposed to install software on mac os, there is no way to write to /usr/bin without disabling sip

[Aboozar Rajabi]

@AlanBirtles I installed it using your command but Rails thinks the gem is missing. How to say it the gem is installed somewhere else?

[Alan Birtles]

You could try setting the GEM_PATH environment variable

[trapper]

Why does it use /usr/bin by default if it will never work?

[Alan Birtles]

@trapper presumably its just installing to the same place as ruby itself is installed

[IgorGanapolsky]

What is generamba?

[Mihail Salari]

@IgorGanapolsky, it's a code generator tool: github.com/strongself/Generamba