This is a simple script library for Linux & Ruby users, whose main goal is to remove unused gems from the system to save disk space. Saving disk space might be a concern if you're using Linux on a small SDD or a small disk partition, for example.
Unused gems are considered to be gems which are not being used by any configured Ruby project. Unused gems are usually the result of upgrading a single gem's version, or upgrading the Ruby interpreter version as a whole, in which case a whole new gemset is created. Both situations leave behind a trail of old and unused gems installed on the system.
Tip: You may think this is not necessary, or maybe overkill, but the amount
of disk space used by Ruby projects is significant. In the gemsetcleaner
example, the script saved 166MB, and surprisingly, the only gem installed on
that gemset was Rails (and its dependencies)! Running this script on my machine,
whose Ubuntu install is roughly 6 months old, cleared a little under 3GB of
space on unused gems and gemsets alone (Ok, I have almost 50 Ruby projects
downloaded and configured, but still).
- Linux. This script was not tested and may not work on MacOS systems.
- RVM. There is no Support for rbenv (yet).
- Valid Ruby projects with
Gemfile,.ruby-versionand.ruby-gemsetfiles (some are optional depending on the script).
There are 3 separate scripts which should be used individually, and have
increasing effects on space savings. The first one, bundlecleaner, will remove
unused gems from a single project. The second, workspacecleaner, will
remove unused gems from all projects within a workspace directory. The
third will remove entire unused gemsets from your system, based on what
gemsets are the projects inside a workspace directory using.
The bundlecleaner script must be executed inside the project directory, and
it can take an optional -q argument. If executed without -q, it will print
some progress updates and the space saved in the end. If executed with -q,
it will only print out the raw number of kilobytes saved. This is intended to
be used on the workspacecleaner script, to be able to add the total space
saved.
Warning: This will uninstall all the local gems which are not present in
the Gemfile.lock file, so if you have a standalone gem that you use locally
but should not be in the Gemfile (for example: the nexus gem which is used to
upload new gems to a Nexus gem repository), these will also be removed.
Dependencies, however, will remain as expected.
Usage:
$ cd ~/workspace/my-project
$ /path_to_gemsetcleaner/bundlecleaner
For the script to successfully execute, it needs 3 things:
- A valid installation of RVM
- The Gemfile file to be present
- A .ruby-version file to be present
- (optional) a .ruby-gemset file to be present
If one of the first previous items is not present, it will not try to clean the
gems, and print an error message instead. If -q was specified, it will
silently return "0" as output.
Example output:
$ ~/bundlecleaner
Trying to remove unused gems...
Removing tilt (2.0.8)
Removing sinatra (2.0.1)
Removing rack-protection (2.0.1)
Removing mustermann (1.0.2)
2,088kb cleared!
The workspacecleaner script can be executed from anywhere, as it will take as
argument the path to the workspace directory. This argument is required and
may be a relative path, such as ..
The workspace directory is the directory where you store all of your projects, or at least most of them.
This script will then look for all directories inside the workspace directory,
assume they're all Ruby projects, and run bundlecleaner. If one or more
directories are not Ruby projects, don't worry, as nothing will be executed and
they will just count as having saved 0kb each.
To execute it:
$ /path_to_gemsetcleaner/workspacecleaner path_to_my_workspace
Example output:
$ ~/workspacecleaner ~/workspace
Cleaning ununsed gems in "project_1/"
Cleaning ununsed gems in "rails/"
Cleaning ununsed gems in "twitter-bootstrap/"
Cleaning ununsed gems in "twitter-react/"
Cleaning ununsed gems in "project_2/"
Cleanup complete! A total of 15,957kb was saved!
The gemsetcleaner script takes the same parameter as workspacecleaner, and
also assumes that the provided workspace directory is where all your Ruby
projects are located. It will check which gemsets are being used by each
project, and compare that with the existing gemsets inside the RVM home
(assumed to be ~/.rvm/gems). If a gemset is found that is not being used by
any project, it will be removed. The script will ask for confirmation before
actually deleting anything.
Warning: This script assumes that all your Ruby projects reside directly under a specific, single workspace directory. If you have Ruby projects on separate workspace directories, you shouldn't run this script, as it will only check for Ruby projects inside one of the directories, not all of them.
To execute it:
$ /path_to_gemsetcleaner/gemsetcleaner path_to_my_workspace
Example output:
$ ~/gemsetcleaner ~/workspace
A total of 1 unused gemsets were found:
01) /home/rodrigo/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.5.1@useless_gemset/
Are you sure you want to remove these 1 gemsets? (yes/no) yes
Removing unused gemsets:
Removing gemset useless_gemset......
Done! 166,692kb cleared!
Rodrigo Castro