So, as I introduced myself to ActiveRecord, I asked our IT department to install activerecord and this hierarchy popped up on the system: /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/activerecord-2.1.1/
then I was able to do this irb(main):003:0> require 'rubygems' => true irb(main):004:0> require 'activerecord' => true
Now I realize FasterCSV, and perhaps migrations would be handy. I'm not building a web application at the moment, rather I'm building a command line api to our DB using ActiveRecord for ORM. However perhaps one day in the future I'll be allowed a rails developed web site....
So, do I ask the IT department to install Ruby on Rails or continue asking for particular packages? I'd rather just get the whole thing. If so, will an install of "rails" override or interfere with already installed rails libraries? They will only install RedHat 5 managed packages without a huge fight. Other packages, I have to compile and install in my own user space (/home).
This is on a RedHat RHEL 5 system (uname = 2.6.18-128.1.1.el5).
Cheers and thanks!