Your own gem repository

Setting up your own repository is quite simple. All you need is the following:

• Web server
• Builder gem
• A repository
• Client setup

Web server
I used nginx but you should be able to tailor this to your needs without too much effort.

Create a directory to contain your local gem repository:

$ sudo mkdir -p /var/www/gems-repo/gems

Note: to get everything working correctly you need to ensure you have that /gems subdirectory off your base directory configured in nginx. You can find more info on this at the RubyGems FAQ.

Add a virtual host config in /etc/nginx/sites-available for your gems repository (I'm going to assume gems.example.com):

$ cat /etc/nginx/sites-available/gems.example.com
server {
 listen   80;
 server_name  gems.example.com;
 access_log  /var/log/nginx/gems.example.com.access.log;
 root /var/www/gems-repo;
}

Ensure you drop a symlink in /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/ for your virtual host and restart nginx.

Install the builder gem

$ sudo gem install builder

Build your repository
Jump into the base directory defined above (/var/www/gems-repo). Copy all your own gems into /var/www/gems-repo/gems/. Then generate the relevant resource files for rubygems:

$ sudo gem generate_index -d /var/www/gems-repo
Loading 1 gems from /var/www/gems-repo
.
Loaded all gems
Generating quick index gemspecs for 1 gems
.
Complete
Generating specs index
Generating latest specs index
Generating quick index
Generating latest index
Generating Marshal master index
Generating YAML master index for 1 gems (this may take a while)
.
Complete
Compressing indicies

You would re-run this every time you add to or make changes to the repository.

Client setup
Finally run the following on all local clients that need access to the repository:

$ sudo gem sources -a http://gems.example.com/

You can ensure the extra source was added by running 'gem sources'. If you now do a search for you gem that you added above you should see it listed as a target.