Right now this is just one class, the puppetized idempotent version of the following: cd /usr/local/src/ sudo wget http://rubyforge.org/frs/download.php/38646/rubygems-1.3.1.tgz sudo tar -xzf rubygems-1.3.1.tgz cd rubygems-1.3.1 sudo ruby setup.rb sudo ln -s /usr/bin/gem1.8 /usr/bin/gem Use it at your own peril