Bundler: The best way to manage Ruby applications

Rails 2.3 comes with its own gem handling. We're going to override that and replace it with support for Bundler.

Using Bundler with Rails 2.3

If you don't have a Rails 2.3 app yet, generate one

$ rails myapp
$ cd myapp

Insert the following code in config/boot.rb, right above the line `Rails.boot!`

class Rails::Boot
  def run
    load_initializer

    Rails::Initializer.class_eval do
      def load_gems
        @bundler_loaded ||= Bundler.require :default, Rails.env
      end
    end

    Rails::Initializer.run(:set_load_path)
  end
end

Create a new file, config/preinitializer.rb, and insert the following

begin
  require "rubygems"
  require "bundler"
rescue LoadError
  raise "Could not load the bundler gem. Install it with `gem install bundler`."
end

if Gem::Version.new(Bundler::VERSION) <= Gem::Version.new("0.9.24")
  raise RuntimeError, "Your bundler version is too old for Rails 2.3." +
   "Run `gem install bundler` to upgrade."
end

begin
  # Set up load paths for all bundled gems
  ENV["BUNDLE_GEMFILE"] = File.expand_path("../../Gemfile", __FILE__)
  Bundler.setup
rescue Bundler::GemNotFound
  raise RuntimeError, "Bundler couldn't find some gems." +
    "Did you run `bundle install`?"
end

Get all config.gem declarations from your application, and place them into the Gemfile. If you have declarations in development.rb, for instance, place them in a named group. Make sure to include Rails itself and at least one source

source :gemcutter
gem "rails", "~> 2.3.5"
gem "sqlite3-ruby", :require => "sqlite3"

# bundler requires these gems in all environments
# gem "nokogiri", "1.4.2"
# gem "geokit"

group :development do
  # bundler requires these gems in development
  # gem "rails-footnotes"
end

group :test do
  # bundler requires these gems while running tests
  # gem "rspec"
  # gem "faker"
end

Learn More: Groups

Once you have everything set up, you can use script/console, script/server, and other Rake tasks as usual. From this point on, you can follow the instructions in the Rails 3 guide

$ rake db:migrate

Learn More: Rails 3