[ruby] ruby LoadError: cannot load such file

I created my own Gem, but I did it in a directory that is not in my load path:

$ pwd
/Users/myuser/projects
$ gem build my_gem/my_gem.gemspec

Then I ran irb and tried to load the Gem:

> require 'my_gem'
LoadError: cannot load such file -- my_gem

I used the global variable $: to inspect my load path and I realized I am using RVM. And rvm has specific directories in my load path $:. None of those directories included my ~/projects directory where I created the custom gem.

So one solution is to modify the load path itself:

$: << "/Users/myuser/projects/my_gem/lib"

Note that the lib directory is in the path, which holds the my_gem.rb file which will be required in irb:

> require 'my_gem'
 => true 

Now if you want to install the gem in RVM path, then you would need to run:

$ gem install my_gem

But it will need to be in a repository like rubygems.org.

$ gem push my_gem-0.0.0.gem
Pushing gem to RubyGems.org...
Successfully registered gem my_gem