At NDTV, we tend to stick to LTS releases of Ubuntu in our servers. Due to the update restrictions, we usually end up building rubygems from source as the default package is outdated. I don’t like this solution as it messes up package dependencies. Turns out there is a PPA for rubygems that seems to be more frequently updated.

On releases older than 9.10, you have add the following lines to your sources.list

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/ubuntu-on-rails/ppa/ubuntu jaunty main

deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/ubuntu-on-rails/ppa/ubuntu jaunty main

Replace jaunty with your Ubuntu release name

You will have to import the repository key as well

sudo apt-key adv –keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com –recv-keys 81C0BE11

On 9.10 and newer, adding the repository is as simple as:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntu-on-rails/ppa

At this point, you can install/update rubygems like before

sudo aptitude update

sudo aptitude install rubygems