What is ansible-ruby?

It is an ansible role to install a specific version of ruby without having to compile ruby on the machine you're setting up. It does this by using rvm under the hood.

What problem does it solve and why is it useful?

I wasn't happy with any of the solutions that existed because they required you to either compile ruby on your server or they were not idempotent. Compiling ruby on a low end VPS/instance could easily take 10 minutes and during that time your CPU is going to be pegged at 100%.

ansible-ruby solves this by using rvm to install 1 or more versions of ruby. It makes installing and upgrading ruby versions very easy.

Role variables

Below is a list of default values along with a description of what they do.

# Set the version of ruby you want to install.
ruby_version: 2.1.2 # X.X.X-pXXX format

# Where should the rvm-installer and other temp files be downloaded to?
ruby_temp_download_path: /usr/local/src

# Where should rvm be installed to?
ruby_rvm_install_path: /usr/local/rvm

# Which url or local path contains the rvm-installer script?
# If you use a url, it must include http:// or https:// at the start.
ruby_rvm_latest_installer: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/wayneeseguin/rvm/master/binscripts/rvm-installer

# Which url or value contains the stable version number of rvm?
# If you use a url, it must include http:// or https:// at the start.
# If you use a value, it should be something like 1.25.27 or any legal version number.

# If you want to lock rvm to a specific version you could enter in the version number
# that you have installed and the role would assume you always have the latest stable version.
ruby_rvm_stable_version_number: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/wayneeseguin/rvm/master/VERSION

# Force upgrade the rvm-installer to the latest installer.
ruby_rvm_force_upgrade_installer: false

Example playbook

For the sake of this example let's assume you have a group called app and you have a typical site.yml file.

To use this role edit your site.yml file to look something like this:

---
- name: ensure app servers are configured
- hosts: app

  roles:
    - { role: nickjj.ruby, tags: ruby }

Let's say you want to edit a few values, you can do this by opening or creating group_vars/app.yml which is located relative to your inventory directory and then making it look something like this:

---
ruby_version: 2.0.0
ruby_rvm_stable_version_number: 1.25.26

Installation

$ ansible-galaxy install nickjj.ruby

Requirements

Tested on ubuntu 12.04 LTS but it should work on other versions that are similar.

Ansible galaxy

You can find it on the official ansible galaxy if you want to rate it.

License

MIT