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My two favorite gem commands are gem install -i ~/tmp/gems and gem which, followed closely by the gem fetch gemname; gem unpack gemname combo.

Now that the install command automatically installs all the necessary dependencies into the installation directory, it’s easy to pull down a gem and play with it without having to do the work of cleaning out all it’s dependencies from your main repository. A simple rm -r ~/tmp/gems is all it takes to clean up.

While I seldom have a need to use it, gem which tells you which file would get loaded when you require something. For example:

<samp>$ gem list activerecord

*** LOCAL GEMS ***

activerecord (1.15.6, 1.15.3)
$ gem which active_record
(checking gem activerecord-1.15.6 for active_record)
/System/Library/Frameworks/[...]/gems/activerecord-1.15.6/lib/active_record.rb</samp>

Finally, if I just want to poke at some code from a gem without bothering to poke through a gem repository, you can use gem fetch gemname; gem unpack gemname and you’ll have a gemname-version directory with the gem sitting right in front of you.