How to install gems without documentation by default

Here’s a quick tip I learned this weekend on how to get all your RubyGems installed without documentation by default.

I knew there was a way to prevent documentation from being installed at the command line with the –no-rdoc –no-ri options:

$ gem install rails --no-rdoc --no-ri

But there’s another way to prevent documentation from being installed. Create a .gemrc file in your home directory with the following:

gem: --no-ri --no-rdoc

Now you don’t have to worry about supplying the command line options, this will give you no documentation by default.