Why Bundle Install is installing gems in vendor/bundle?

Whenever I do bundle install all of the gems get installed at

app_dir/vendor/bundle

path and consumes loads of disk space. I also tried installing gems where it should get installed i.e gemsets while development by this:

bundle install --no-deployement

but this isn't working for me and installeing gems at vendor/bundle. How can I make it to be installed globally for all applications or in ruby gemsets location ? I also tried removing .bundle/config but nothing changed.

I am using:

rvm version: 1.23.14
ruby version: 2.0.0-p247
rails 3.2.13

Here is my ~/.bash_profile:

export PATH=/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/usr/local/bin
eval "$(rbenv init -)"
alias pg='pg_ctl -D /usr/local/var/postgres -l /usr/local/var/postgres/server.log'

[[ -s "$HOME/.rvm/scripts/rvm" ]] && source "$HOME/.rvm/scripts/rvm" # Load RVM into a shell session *as a function*
[[ -s "$HOME/.rvm/scripts/rvm" ]] && . "$HOME/.rvm/scripts/rvm" # Load RVM function

My ~/.bashrc:

PATH=$PATH:$HOME/.rvm/bin # Add RVM to PATH for scripting

Some other information that you might need:

aman@Amandeeps-MacBook-Pro ~/Projects/qe (develop)*$ which bundle
/Users/aman/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.0.0-p247@global/bin/bundle

aman@Amandeeps-MacBook-Pro ~/Projects/qe (develop)*$ rbenv which bundle
/Users/aman/.rbenv/versions/2.0.0-p247/bin/bundle

amandeep@Amandeeps-MacBook-Pro ~/Projects/qe (develop)*$ rbenv which ruby
/Users/aman/.rbenv/versions/2.0.0-p247/bin/ruby

aman@Amandeeps-MacBook-Pro ~/Projects/qe (develop)*$ rbenv gemset active
rbenv: NO such command `gemset'

aman@Amandeeps-MacBook-Pro ~/Projects/qe (develop)*$ which rails
/Users/aman/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.0.0-p247@global/bin/rails

I tried this also but didn't helped:

bundle install --system

and removing .bundle directory.

Please help me in installing gems in gemsets not vendor/bundle or a default place.


In your project folder you will have .bundle directory that holds configuration for bundler. try deleting that folder. it should reset the install path for your gems back to system-wide settings.

In the case you just want to edit the install path, opening .bundle/config with your favorite editor should show you the path to vendor/bundle. Removing that line will restore it to defaults without removing other configs you might have.

Also, another less frequent scenario is your system-wide settings being messed up. According to @NaoiseGolden:

I had to delete .bundle from my Home folder (rm -rf ~/.bundle). You can check out your configuration running bundle env


Try installing using

bundle install --system

I think initially the bundle install was run with --path flag and bundler now rememebers that confguration.

From the bundler man page

Some options are remembered between calls to bundle install, and by the Bundler runtime.

Subsequent calls to bundle install will install gems to the directory originally passed to --path. The Bundler runtime will look for gems in that location. You can revert this option by running bundle install --system.

EDIT: As mentioned in comments below, and also otherwise, this installs the gems system wide. In case you are using rvm etc to manage your environment for different apps, check @IuriG's answer mentioned above.