title: Ruby gem listed, but won't load (gem in user dir, not ruby dir)
body: <p>I'm trying to get some gems working on a web-host which supports ruby and some ruby gems, but not some of the ones I need to use.</p>
  
  <p>Following the instructions I found <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/913153/using-a-gem-without-installing-it">here</a>, I kept the original gem location in my gem path, and added my own at /path/to/my/home/gems to ~/.gemrc</p>
  
  <pre><code>gemhome: /users/home/myuser/gems
  gempath:
  - /usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8
  - /users/home/mysuser/gems
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I downloaded some gems manually and did installs using the --local and --install-dir options of the gem command.  I then did a "gem list", and can in fact see the gems I installed in my user directory, as well as the original gems in the normal system path.</p>
  
  <p>If I kick on IRB or do a ruby -e, all the system gems work fine.  However, I can't get my user directory installed gems loaded:</p>
  
  <pre><code>$ ruby -r rubygems -e "require 'nokogiri'"
  /usr/local/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/rubygems/custom_require.rb:21:in `require__': no such file to load -- nokogiri (LoadError)
      from /usr/local/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/rubygems/custom_require.rb:21:in `require'
      from -e:1
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I even tried the old school require_gem:</p>
  
  <pre><code>$ irb -r rubygems
  irb(main):001:0&gt; require_gem 'nokogiri'
  Gem::LoadError: Could not find RubyGem nokogiri (&gt; 0.0.0)
  
      from /usr/local/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/rubygems.rb:204:in `report_activate_error'
      from /usr/local/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/rubygems.rb:141:in `activate'
      from /usr/local/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/rubygems.rb:37:in `require_gem_with_options'
      from /usr/local/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/rubygems.rb:31:in `require_gem'
      from (irb):1
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>From my "gems list" I can see:</p>
  
  <pre><code>nokogiri (1.3.3)
  Nokogiri is an HTML, XML, SAX, and Reader parser
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I have this same problem with all the user-directory install gems.  What am I missing here?</p>
  
  <p>EDIT: This is <em>not</em> a rails app.  This is for a command line-application.  The program will be executed by my user account, just like the tests shown above in.</p>
  
  <p>EDIT: Per Rafe's suggestion, I looked at Gem.path from IRB.  It <em>only</em> lists the system gem path, /usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8, and not my user dir path as well.</p>