Creating a new Rails edge application using Docker and Bundler 2.4

There is a feature in the newest version of Bundler (2.4) that speeds up installation of gems with git sources. In previous versions it would clone the full repository and with a big repo like Rails it could take a while (~30 seconds). Now it is much faster and we can start a new application from the as-yet-unreleased version of rails by using the rails repo as our gem source in less than a minute.

Here’s how:

Jump into a docker ruby environment

docker run -it ruby:latest bash

Update bundler to the latest version (2.4 at the time of this writing)

gem update bundler

Add rubygems source and the rails gem straight from Github to a Gemfile

echo "source 'https://rubygems.org'" >> Gemfile
echo "gem 'rails', github: 'rails/rails'" >> Gemfile

Run bundler

bundler install

Start a new rails app using the version we just installed using bundler.

bundle exec rails new testing --dev

You can read more about Bundler 2.4