How to stop the 'gem' utility from accessing my home directory?
Just change HOMEDRIVE and HOMEPATH before running gem, and restore after (if needed).
I've changed my gem.bat like this:
@ECHO OFFSET _HOMEDRIVE=%HOMEDRIVE%SET _HOMEPATH=%HOMEPATH%SET HOMEDRIVE=E:SET HOMEPATH=/Dev/RubyIF NOT "%~f0" == "~f0" GOTO :WinNT@"ruby.exe" "E:/Dev/Ruby/bin/gem" %1 %2 %3 %4 %5 %6 %7 %8 %9GOTO :EOF:WinNT@"ruby.exe" "%~dpn0" %*SET HOMEDRIVE=%_HOMEDRIVE%SET HOMEPATH=%_HOMEPATH%E:/Dev/Ruby/ is my Ruby path. It seems that HOMEPATH can be changed to anything else with ASCII only characters in path.
It's simpler to write:
@ECHO OFFSET HOMEPATH=IF NOT "%~f0" == "~f0" GOTO :WinNTECHO.This version of Ruby has not been built with support for Windows 95/98/Me.GOTO :EOF:WinNT@"ruby.exe" "%~dpn0" %*In this case you don't need to write your path and can replace or redistribute with file for new installations