Check for Ruby Gem availability

Question

Is there a way to check if some gem is currently installed, via the Gem module? From ruby code, not by executing \'gem list\'...

To clarify - I don\'t want to load t

Answer 1

I use this code and it works smoothly.

def gem_available?(gem_name, version = nil)
  version.nil? gem(gem_name) : gem(gem_name, version)
rescue Gem::LoadError
  false
end

Examples to use

Let's assume you have rack 1.9.1 installed.

puts gem_available?('rack') # => true
puts gem_available?('rack', '>=2') => # false