How to remove RVM (Ruby Version Manager) from my system

Question

How can I remove RVM (Ruby Version Manager) from my system?

Answer 1

I am running Ubuntu 19.04 and followed all the instructions above and then some. Finally, what worked for me was to run

sudo apt autoremove rvm

and now when I try and reinstall RVM it's actually gone. RVM is invasive, to say the least.

Answer 2

If you're still getting a env: ruby_executable_hooks: No such file or directory when calling some Ruby package, that means RVM left a little gift for you in your $PATH.

Run the following to find the offending scripts:

grep '#!/usr/bin/env ruby_executable_hooks' /usr/local/bin/*

Then rm all the matches. You'll have to reinstall all of those libraries with an RVM-free gem, of course.

Answer 3

There's a simple command built-in that will pull it:

rvm implode

This will remove the rvm/ directory and all the rubies built within it. In order to remove the final trace of rvm, you need to remove the rvm gem, too:

gem uninstall rvm

If you've made modifications to your PATH you might want to pull those, too. Check your .bashrc, .profile and .bash_profile files, among other things.

You may also have an /etc/rvmrc file, or one in your home directory ~/.rvmrc that may need to be removed as well.

Answer 4

When using implode and you see:

Psychologist intervened, cancelling implosion, crisis avoided :)

Then you may want to use --force

rvm implode --force

Then remove RVM from the following locations:

rm -rf /usr/local/rvm
sudo rm /etc/profile.d/rvm.sh
sudo rm /etc/rvmrc
sudo rm ~/.rvmrc

Check the following files and remove or comment out references to RVM:

~/.bashrc 
~/.bash_profile 
~/.profile 
~/.zshrc
~/.zlogin

Comment-out/remove the following lines from /etc/profile:

 source /etc/profile.d/sm.sh
 source /etc/profile.d/rvm.sh

/etc/profile is a read-only file so use:

sudo vim /etc/profile

And after making the change write using a bang!

:w!

Finally re-login/restart your terminal.

Answer 5

For other shell newbies trying to fix the PATH variable

After following instructions in accepted answer, check and modify your PATH variable if necessary :

env | grep PATH 

if you see "rvm" anywhere, you need to figure out where you are setting PATH and modify. I was setting it in 3 files - so check all the following files:

vim .bashrc  

Delete the lines in the file referencing rvm using the dd command. :wq to save and exit.
source .bashrc to "reload"

Repeat this process (starting with the vim command) for .profile and .bash_profile

Answer 6

Per RVM's troubleshooting documentation "How do I completely clean out all traces of RVM from my system, including for system wide installs?":

Here is a custom script which we name as 'cleanout-rvm'. While you can definitely use rvm implode as a regular user or rvmsudo rvm implode for a system wide install, this script is useful as it steps completely outside of RVM and cleans out RVM without using RVM itself, leaving no traces.

#!/bin/bash
/usr/bin/sudo rm -rf $HOME/.rvm $HOME/.rvmrc /etc/rvmrc /etc/profile.d/rvm.sh /usr/local/rvm /usr/local/bin/rvm
/usr/bin/sudo /usr/sbin/groupdel rvm
/bin/echo "RVM is removed. Please check all .bashrc|.bash_profile|.profile|.zshrc for RVM source lines and delete or comment out if this was a Per-User installation."