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~ / til / Using RVM with Alacritty 2024-01-10 | 1 minute

I have have been using Alacritty as my terminal emulator for the past few months, and I am absolutely loving it so far. However, I have recently run into an issue while trying to use RVM (Ruby Version Manager).

When running the command:

rvm use <$RUBY_VERSION>

I get the following error message:

RVM is not a function, selecting rubies with 'rvm use ...' will not work.

You need to change your terminal emulator preferences to allow login shell.
Sometimes it is required to use `/bin/bash --login` as the command.
Please visit https://rvm.io/integration/gnome-terminal/ for an example.

So, we need to be in a login shell. Unfortunately, Alacritty does not have a settings GUI like gnome-terminal and similar, and after thorough investigation I couldn’t find a way to set this up through Alacritty. We need a different solution.

Luckily, this is possible through the shell itself. You can open a login shell by running the following command (press Ctrl+D to return to the interactive shell):

bash --login

This also works with zsh, or Z-shell:

zsh --login

Unfortunately for all you fishers out there, I couldn’t find a way to to this with fish. If you know how, send me an email!

There are some drawbacks to this method.

You will have to do this every time you want to use RVM.
Commands such as rvm use only persist in the login shell, so you will have to stay in there if you want to use RVM, and the version of Ruby that you have selected. I toyed about with using zsh --login -c "rvm use <$RUBY_VERSION>", but this will immediately return you to the interactive shell without any of the changes that you made.

Issues or comments? Email me!

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