Updating Ruby cheatsheet

📅 January 21st, 2026 (Updated: February 12th, 2026) • 🖊 Felipe Bojorquez • 🏷 software, code

Although rbenv makes managing multiple Ruby versions straightforward, I’ve found that updating Ruby for active projects still involves a handful of important steps. Forgetting one of them sometimes leads to confusing dependency issues or mismatched versions. For this reason, I put together a concise checklist of the commands I use when upgrading Ruby.

Whenever a new version of Ruby comes out and I want to update my project and coding environment, I run:

1. rbenv install -l to list latest stable versions available.
2. rbenv install x.y.z install selected version.
3. rbenv global x.y.z set global version to use.
4. Update Gemfile to new version number in the project.
5. Update .ruby-version to new version number in the project.
6. Run gem install bundler to install the latest version, appropriate for the just installed Ruby version.
7. Delete the lock file of the project to regenerate it.
8. In the project, run bundle install to update lock file.
9. Done.

Update February 12th, 2026: I have found that deleting the .lock file of the project before running bundle install and starting fresh has helped me when troubleshooting the Ruby version of a project, so I added it as step #7.