I'm a fan of both approaches. On my development machine I use rvm and project specific gemsets because it gives you a sandbox development solution per project.

I'm a fan of both approaches. On my development machine I use rvm and project specific gemsets because it gives you a sandbox development solution per project. On my production servers I prefer to use a compiled version of Ruby and manage gems with Bundler for the performance benefits. The power of Bundler really starts to shine once you wrap your head around the versioning constrains and policies http://docs.rubygems.org/read/chapter/16#page74 http://docs.rubygems.org/read/chapter/16#page74