Ruby in Gitpod

It’s relatively easy to set up your Ruby project in Gitpod.

Ruby Versions

As of this writing, Gitpod comes with Ruby 2.6.6 pre-installed.

To use a different Ruby version (for example, 2.5.1) you can create a .gitpod.Dockerfile for your project, and then add something like the second paragraph to it:

FROM gitpod/workspace-full
USER gitpod

# Install Ruby version 2.5.1 and set it as default
RUN echo "rvm_gems_path=/home/gitpod/.rvm" > ~/.rvmrc
RUN bash -lc "rvm install ruby-2.5.1 &&               rvm use ruby-ruby-2.5.1 --default"
RUN echo "rvm_gems_path=/workspace/.rvm" > ~/.rvmrc

💡 Explanation: Gitpod initially sets up RVM in /home/gitpod/.rvm, but then later switches the RVM configuration directory to /workspace/.rvm, so that any user-made changes (like installing new gems) are persisted within a Gitpod workspace. However, during the Dockerfile build, the /workspace directory doesn’t exist yet, so we temporarily reset RVM’s configuration directory to /home/gitpod/.rvm.

Example Repositories

Here are a few Ruby example projects that are already automated with Gitpod:

Repository	Description	Try it
Ruby on Rails template	Ruby on Rails template with a PostgreSQL database
Forem	The platform that powers dev.to
GitLab	The open source end-to-end software development platform

VSCode Extensions

Here are a few useful extensions that you’ll likely want to install in your Ruby project.

Ruby Test Explorer

With the Ruby test explorer, you can run unit tests from within the Gitpod UI. Ruby test explorer example To add this extension to your repository, simply add these lines to your .gitpod.yml configuration file:

vscode:
  extensions:
    - connorshea.vscode-ruby-test-adapter@0.6.1:HO9rpcRv7bmRIuo7Mty/zg==
    - hbenl.vscode-test-explorer@2.15.0:koqDUMWDPJzELp/hdS/lWw==

Ruby On Rails