Installing Ruby on Windows 11

This article explains how to install Ruby on Windows 11, configure it, and use it. We’ll install it using Chocolatey from PowerShell. Ruby is a language originating from Japan and is widely adopted in domestic programming education. It’s easy for beginners to learn due to the abundance of Japanese documentation and information, and it’s an active language with frameworks and libraries such as Ruby on Rails being actively developed.

In this article, we’ll install Ruby using Chocolatey. With Choco on Windows and Windows 11, you can install various programs and utility software used in programming, such as programming languages, development environments, libraries, and software, using shortcuts. If you know how to use Choco, you can check the programs you want to install from Choco’s website database and install them by command, automatically completing the installation including the tedious installation and environment variable path settings, without having to look up how to install programming languages like Python and Ruby each time. Install Chocolatey on Windows 11. Open PowerShell with administrator privileges and run the following command. To open PowerShell with administrator privileges, right-click the PowerShell icon in the taskbar, right-click again, and select “Run as administrator”.

> Set-ExecutionPolicy Bypass -Scope Process -Force; [System.Net.ServicePointManager]::SecurityProtocol = [System.Net.ServicePointManager]::SecurityProtocol -bor 3072; iex ((New-Object System.Net.WebClient).DownloadString('https://chocolatey.org/install.ps1'))

If the following is displayed, the installation has completed successfully.

“Chocolatey (choco.exe) is now ready”

To ensure the installation was successful, check the version output.

> choco --version
0.11.3

Run the refreshenv command.

> refreshenv
Refreshing environment variables from registry for cmd.exe. Please wait...Finished..

At this point, various programming languages, development environments, libraries, and software available through Choco can be installed.

Now we’ll install Ruby using Choco.

Install Ruby with the following command.

> choco install ruby -y

> choco install ruby -y
Chocolatey v0.11.3
Installing the following packages:
ruby
By installing, you accept licenses for the packages.
Progress: Downloading ruby 3.0.2.1... 100%

ruby v3.0.2.1 [Approved]

Ruby installation is complete at this point, but note that you must restart the console before the commands become available. For example, if you’re running powershell.exe, close that window and open a new one. If you’re using ConEmu, close ConEmu and open a new one. Alternatively, you can open a new instance without any issues.

If you run it in the same console window, you’ll get an error like this:

> ruby --version 
ruby : The term 'ruby' is not recognized as the name of a cmdlet, function, script file, or operable program.
Check the spelling of the name, or if a path was included, verify that the path is correct and try again.

On a new console instance command line, check the Ruby version with the following command.

> ruby --version
ruby 3.0.2p107 (2021-07-07 revision 0db68f0233) [x64-mingw32]

To check the installed folder and path, run the Get-Command command as follows. You can confirm it’s installed in the path (folder) C:\tools\ruby30\bin\ruby.exe.

> Get-Command ruby

CommandType     Name                                               Version    Source
-----------     ----                                               -------    ------
Application     ruby.exe                                           3.0.2.107  C:\tools\ruby30\bin\ruby.exe

Let’s try Hello World with Ruby.

> ruby -e "puts `'Hello World...`'"
Hello World...

Note that the above command is for execution in PowerShell. It will probably error in WSL Bash or cmd.exe because the escape sequences are different. (Example below)

#  ruby -e "puts `'Hello World...`'"
-e:1: syntax error, unexpected string literal, expecting end-of-input
puts `'Hello World...`'