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Ruby Installing Rails on Linux

Abhinav Kanoria
Abhinav Kanoria
7,730 Points
Posted by Abhinav Kanoria
Abhinav Kanoria
7,730 Points

Ruby Versions

In this Ruby on rails course, is the name of the version 5.0.0 or 2.3.1?? In this workshop video, we use rvm install 2.3.1. But in the 'Ruby Basics' course, it says 5.0.0. version. Also, I googled about the version and it says latest version is 4.2.

What exactly is going on?? Which version should I put when I type 'rvm install <version>' in terminal? What should I enter in place of <version> in this command so that I can be abreast with the version being used in the Ruby basics (and other) course given on Treehouse? Please help this version thing is really confusing.

1 Answer

Jay McGavren
STAFF
Jay McGavren
Treehouse Teacher
Jay McGavren
Jay McGavren
Treehouse Teacher

It's important not to confuse the version of Ruby (the programming language) with the version of Rails (the web framework that is written in Ruby). The latest stable version of Rails at the time I write this post is 5.0.2. The latest stable version of Ruby is 2.4.1.

Unless you know for sure what you are doing, we actually recommend that you install the older version of Ruby and the older version of Rails that are discussed in the videos. Otherwise, it is possible (although unlikely) that changes in Ruby or changes in Rails could cause commands demonstrated in the courses not to work. If you type the commands as shown in the courses, you'll get the recommended versions (or a slightly more recent version that is fully compatible).

That said, it's pretty unlikely that anything will be incompatible. So if you already have Ruby or Ruby on Rails installed, and you see instructions in another course to install a different version, you can disregard them and keep your existing version. You'll only need to switch versions if you encounter problems later.

Abhinav Kanoria
Abhinav Kanoria
7,730 Points
Abhinav Kanoria
Abhinav Kanoria
7,730 Points

Thanks for your reply. I had figured that out after I asked my friends. They told me the same. Actually, I'm very hesitant to download/install something which I might not need or which might be wrong. Same thing happened with me while trying out Android Studio as there were many versions and I couldn't decide which one to install.