The recent version bump of rake seems to do no good for Ruby developer. And when combined with the monster Ruby 1.9.2, you can imagine you could pull your hair out trying to figure out why this or that doesn’t work. So if you happen to install Ruby 1.9.2 using RVM and bumped into below errors:
/Users/devuser/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.2-p290/gems/rake-0.9.2/lib/rake/version.rb:4: warning: already initialized constant MAJOR /Users/devuser/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.2-p290/gems/rake-0.9.2/lib/rake/version.rb:5: warning: already initialized constant MINOR /Users/devuser/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.2-p290/gems/rake-0.9.2/lib/rake/version.rb:6: warning: already initialized constant BUILD /Users/devuser/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.2-p290/gems/rake-0.9.2/lib/rake/version.rb:3: warning: already initialized constant NUMBERS /Users/devuser/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.2-p290/gems/rake-0.9.2/lib/rake/version.rb:9: warning: already initialized constant VERSION /Users/devuser/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.2-p290/gems/rake-0.9.2/lib/rake.rb:26: warning: already initialized constant RAKEVERSION /Users/devuser/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.2-p290/gems/rake-0.9.2/lib/rake/early_time.rb:17: warning: already initialized constant EARLY /Users/devuser/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.2-p290/gems/rake-0.9.2/lib/rake/alt_system.rb:32: warning: already initialized constant WINDOWS /Users/devuser/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.2-p290/gems/rake-0.9.2/lib/rake/application.rb:28: warning: already initialized constant DEFAULT_RAKEFILES WARNING: Possible conflict with Rake extension: String#ext already exists WARNING: Possible conflict with Rake extension: String#pathmap already exists /Users/devuser/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.2-p290/gems/rake-0.9.2/lib/rake/task_arguments.rb:73: warning: already initialized constant EMPTY_TASK_ARGS /Users/devuser/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.2-p290/gems/rake-0.9.2/lib/rake/invocation_chain.rb:49: warning: already initialized constant EMPTY /Users/devuser/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.2-p290/gems/rake-0.9.2/lib/rake/file_utils.rb:10: warning: already initialized constant RUBY /Users/devuser/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.2-p290/gems/rake-0.9.2/lib/rake/file_utils.rb:84: warning: already initialized constant LN_SUPPORTED /Users/devuser/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.2-p290/gems/rake-0.9.2/lib/rake/dsl_definition.rb:143: warning: already initialized constant Commands /Users/devuser/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.2-p290/gems/rake-0.9.2/lib/rake/file_list.rb:44: warning: already initialized constant ARRAY_METHODS /Users/devuser/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.2-p290/gems/rake-0.9.2/lib/rake/file_list.rb:47: warning: already initialized constant MUST_DEFINE /Users/devuser/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.2-p290/gems/rake-0.9.2/lib/rake/file_list.rb:51: warning: already initialized constant MUST_NOT_DEFINE /Users/devuser/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.2-p290/gems/rake-0.9.2/lib/rake/file_list.rb:55: warning: already initialized constant SPECIAL_RETURN /Users/devuser/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.2-p290/gems/rake-0.9.2/lib/rake/file_list.rb:61: warning: already initialized constant DELEGATING_METHODS /Users/devuser/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.2-p290/gems/rake-0.9.2/lib/rake/file_list.rb:364: warning: already initialized constant DEFAULT_IGNORE_PATTERNS /Users/devuser/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.2-p290/gems/rake-0.9.2/lib/rake/file_list.rb:370: warning: already initialized constant DEFAULT_IGNORE_PROCS /Users/devuser/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.2-p290/gems/rake-0.9.2/lib/rake.rb:64: warning: already initialized constant FileList /Users/devuser/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.2-p290/gems/rake-0.9.2/lib/rake.rb:65: warning: already initialized constant RakeFileUtils rake aborted! stack level too deep
Here is how you could fix without reverting to version 0.8.7:
1. Please verify the rake installation with gem list | grep 'rake'. You will likely to see rake (0.9.2 ruby). I have no idea what ruby means, but it seems a duplication of rake that is installed @global.
2. Remove the duplicated version with gem uninstall rake. Please say Y for both 2 questions. Verify again with gem list | grep 'rake' and this time the output is rake (0.9.2). That’s it, this has fixed the issue. I speculate this is a bug with RVM.
Some people dislike 0.9.2 and wants to revert to 0.8.7 yet they could not do gem uninstall because rake is kept within no-touch @global zone. So here is how you can manually remove rake 0.9.2 from @global:
1. We need to figure out where rake resides with gem list -d rake. The output will likely be:
*** LOCAL GEMS ***
rake (0.9.2)
Author: Jim Weirich
Rubyforge: http://rubyforge.org/projects/rake
Homepage: http://rake.rubyforge.org
Installed at: /Users/mojo/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.2-p290@global
Ruby based make-like utility.
2. The “Installed at” is the location, now we can remove it manually:
rm /Users/mojo/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.2-p290\@global/bin/rake rm /Users/mojo/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.2-p290\@global/cache/rake-0.9.2.gem rm -rf /Users/mojo/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.2-p290\@global/doc/rake-0.9.2/ rm -rf /Users/mojo/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.2-p290\@global/gems/rake-0.9.2/ rm /Users/mojo/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.2-p290\@global/specifications/rake-0.9.2.gemspec
3. Install rake 0.8.7 with gem install rake -v=0.8.7
Hope this helps.
The Rubyist Journal 
Thanks, saved me (some) hair pulling.
Thank you, thank you, thank you! This one had me scratching my head for a while too!
Thank you very much for this, saved a massive headache! 🙂
Worked splendidly! Thanks a bunch!
Thank you so much for writing this up! My coworkers and I were going crazy trying to find a solution to this. Everywhere else was talking about a bundle flag (bundle install –relock) that was removed. Your solution worked perfectly!
Saved me many hours…!!! Thanks!
Thanks for the tip, this worked a treat!
Thanks. This made a lot of sense.
Thanks much, I was driven nut with this. Have you submitted this issue to RVM team?
Thanks man! I was really starting to loose my patience with this problem. Didn’t have a clue about what was causing this. Thanks again!
Ty! That solved the problem for me. Rails 3.1, Ruby 1.9.2 on Linux Mint.
Thanks a lot!!!
~Thank you.
Or if you are using bundler, simply run “bundle exec rake” instead of “rake”, and it will load the correct version for you.
Thanks Jones, Use ‘bundle exec’ is not as elegant as your solution.
Thanks for your solution but when i uninstalled rake and try rake db:migrate
got this
Could not find rake-0.9.2 in any of the sources
Try running `bundle install`
What does gem list | grep ‘rake’ return?
thank you thank you this saved my life
Thank you very much! I’m very happy :). Muy buena información
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Really really thx! It just didn’t make sense 🙂
Instead of removing file manually, you can do:
$ rvm use @global
$ gem uninstall rake
‘bundle’ is not recognized as an internal or external command,
operable program or batch file.
for windows