Install the gem or a package?

rubyonrails-talk
1

I just installed macports. When do you know to install a gem or a package? For example the rb-rake package. Whats the difference between the 2?

Thanks!

2

Ben Johnson wrote:

I just installed macports. When do you know to install a gem or a package? For example the rb-rake package. Whats the difference between the 2?

Thanks!

It's a question of personal taste. In the case of ruby, I prefer using the gem system as it is fully integrated and easy to use, also it will allow you to update as soon as there is an update available for your gem, a thing that might be longer with macports since someone has to update the repository. Macports is very useful to install some packages that you might want to use with rails such as MySQL or Apache.