New RVM Behavior With .ruby-version and .ruby-gemset

I trust RVM to manage my Ruby versions and my gemsets. So when I saw an unexpected change in RVM’s behavior, I was concerned about a possible disruption in my workflow.

A New RVM Message

Here’s the message I received when I changed into mydirectory/:

~/Code/Ruby/apps/$ cd mydirectory/
You are using '.rvmrc', it requires trusting, it is slower and it is not
compatible with other ruby managers, you can switch to '.ruby-version'
using 'rvm rvmrc to [.]ruby-version' or ignore this warnings with 
'rvm rvmrc warning ignore ~/Code/Ruby/apps/mydirectory/.rvmrc', 
'.rvmrc' will continue to be the default project file in RVM 1 and RVM 2,
to ignore the warning for all files run 
'rvm rvmrc warning ignore all .rvmrcs'.

~/Code/Ruby/apps/mydirectory[master]$

Decision: Do the Update

Ignoring a warning feels like sticking my head in the sand. It’s better to face things head-on. So I decided to go with the update. If things don’t work out, I can always remove RVM completely and start from scratch.

~/Code/Ruby/apps/mydirectory[master]$ rvm rvmrc to .ruby-version

My shell responded by repeating the .rvmrc vs .ruby-version notice. But when I examine the directory, everything looks good.

total 56
drwx---rwx   53 rth  wheel   1802 Apr 19 07:18 .
drwx---rwx   27 rth  wheel    918 Feb 10 08:26 ..
-rw-r--r--    1 rth  wheel    175 Feb  4 13:41 .gitignore
-rw-r--r--@   1 rth  wheel      0 Oct 15  2012 .repl_history
-rw-r--r--    1 rth  wheel     11 Apr 19 07:18 .ruby-gemset
-rw-r--r--    1 rth  wheel     16 Apr 19 07:18 .ruby-version
drwxr-xr-x   10 rth  wheel    340 Feb 14 20:41 AFNetworking-RubyMotion-Example
drwxr-xr-x   13 rth  wheel    442 Feb 24 17:29 AccordionUIView

Instead of a single .rvmrc file, Ruby versions are managed by .ruby-version while gemsets are managed through .ruby-gemset.

Bash Alias

Next, it’s time to clean things up by adding an alias to ~/.bash_profile.

alias newrvm="rvm rvmrc to .ruby-version"

Tell the terminal session to use the new ~/.bash_profile with

$ source ~/.bash_profile

And now we can begin using .ruby-version and .ruby-gemset in any .rvmrc-equipped directory with a simple one-word command.

$ newrvm

Feedback Welcome

If you notice any snags (including typos) in the above procedure, please reach out via the comments below or through Twitter.