Installing a Prerelease Version of cov-loupe¶

Prerelease versions of gems (those containing .pre, .alpha, .beta, .rc, etc.) are not installed by default in RubyGems.

Command Line Installation¶

When users run gem install cov-loupe, RubyGems installs the latest stable version, skipping any prereleases.

To install a prerelease, you must explicitly opt in:

# Install the latest prerelease
gem install cov-loupe --pre

# Install a specific prerelease version
gem install cov-loupe -v 4.0.0.pre

Gemfile¶

In a Gemfile, you need to explicitly specify the prerelease version:

# Exact version
gem 'cov-loupe', '4.0.0.pre'

# Or allow any 4.0.0 prerelease
gem 'cov-loupe', '~> 4.0.0.pre'

Without an explicit version constraint that includes the prerelease suffix, Bundler will skip prereleases just like gem install does.

Gemspec Dependencies¶

For gemspec dependencies on prerelease gems, you must specify the prerelease version explicitly:

spec.add_dependency 'cov-loupe', '~> 4.0.0.pre'

Key Point¶

Version constraints like ~> 4.0 or >= 4.0 will not match prereleases. You must include the prerelease segment in the constraint for it to match.