gempath

A simple script used to print the path to a given gem.

Why

A lot of times when I'm working on a project, I want to quickly view the source of a certain gem. Since I use Bundler, I can usually do:

vim $(bundle show GEMNAME)

But, other times, when I want to examine random gems, but don't want to to add it to my Gemfile, I end up doing something like:

gem list -d GEMNAME
# look for gem path, copy/paste/cd to path
# cd GEMNAME-x.x.x

That takes too long. Hence, gempath.

Install

$ gem install gempath

Usage

The most basic scenario:

$ gempath rails
> /Users/xxxx/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-head/gems/rails-3.2.3

But what if you have multiple versions of the rails gem installed. gempath supports version strings just like Gemfiles

$ gempath rails -v '=3.2.1'
> /Users/xxxx/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-head/gems/rails-3.2.1

Once I have the path, it's a simple cd, and I'm off and reading code:

$ cd $(gempath rails -v '=3.2.1')

or even quicker

$ vim $(gempath rails -v '=3.2.1')