loopkid: uninstall all gems

uninstall all gems

Stefan — Sat, 31 May 2008 16:15:00 +0200

To perform batch operations in MacPorts you can use the predefined pseudo-portnames. RubyGems has no such thing, but instead it can handle regular expressions. So to uninstall all gems of your default RubyGems installation you can simply issue the following command.

sudo gem uninstall --a --ignore-dependencies .+

You may have to execute it twice before all gems are gone. If the command doesn’t work then try this shell script (thanks to melzz):

#!/bin/bash

GEMS=`gem list --no-versions`
for x in $GEMS ; do gem uninstall $x; done

Bharat Ruparel asked in the comments if there is a way to automatize the reinstallation of the gems. Yes, there is. This solution generates a file containing a list of all the gems and after removing all gems reads the gem names from this file to reinstall them. The solution does not however honor the installed version of the gems, so if you care about the versions you’re going to have to find a different way. I have tested this on Mac OS X, if you’re using Linux you’d want to replace the -E with an -r and escape the asterik with a backslash as pointed out in the comments.

gem list --no-versions | sed -E '/^(*|$)/d' > installed_gems
sudo gem uninstall --a --ignore-dependencies .+
cat installed_gems | xargs sudo gem install
rm installed_gems

"uninstall all gems" by Timo

Wed, 06 Apr 2011 10:13:51 +0200

One liner for those of you who were unable to get the regexp working: gem list –no-version | xargs gem uninstall -aIx

"uninstall all gems" by Don Smith

Mon, 16 Aug 2010 03:40:03 +0200

http://gist.github.com/526232

Thanks!

"uninstall all gems" by boourns

Wed, 02 Jun 2010 02:34:37 +0200

Ivan, yours worked great, thanks. on ubuntu 10.04, trying to downgrade rails 3 beta to 2.3.8 by reinstalling everything

"uninstall all gems" by Ivan Storck

Tue, 22 Dec 2009 04:57:06 +0100

this is the version that worked for me: gem list --no-versions | xargs --interactive sudo gem uninstall -a -I

"uninstall all gems" by stefan

Wed, 23 Sep 2009 16:50:34 +0200

the problem might be, that you’re using an irregular dash. try entering the statement manually instead of copy & pasting it and see if it works! good luck!

"uninstall all gems" by acatl

Wed, 23 Sep 2009 16:34:10 +0200

hi, any idea why im getting this error:

ERROR: While executing gem … (Gem::InstallError) cannot uninstall, check gem list -d .+

I’m on OS X and ran the command: sudo gem uninstall –a –ignore-dependencies .+

"uninstall all gems" by Stefan

Sun, 15 Mar 2009 20:09:04 +0100

Thank you for your helpful comment, I have added a notice to the posting!

"uninstall all gems" by stumble

Sun, 15 Mar 2009 19:03:05 +0100

Also, for Linux, you need to escape the * in the regexp:

gem list --no-versions | sed -r '/^(\*|$)/d' > installed_gems

"uninstall all gems" by Stefan

Thu, 03 Jul 2008 22:52:48 +0200

I have edited the posting. If you haven’t already wiped your gems, this might be what you’re looking for.

"uninstall all gems" by Bharat Ruparel

Thu, 03 Jul 2008 17:00:05 +0200

Thank you. This saves me all kinds of time. Is there an automated way of installing gems so rebuilding is just as easy?