Summary

The community.general.gem module incorrectly reports changed : true on Ubuntu when trying to uninstall a default gem e.g. 'json', without actually uninstalling the gem. This occurs either when the uninstall occurs in the user's local cache (user_install: true) or for all users. In contrast, on Fedora, RHEL and Rocky we receive an error message, which is the expected behaviour.

Issue Type

Bug Report

Component Name

gem

Ansible Version

$ ansible --version
ansible [core 2.18.6]
  python version = 3.12.3 
  jinja version = 3.1.6
  libyaml = True

Community.general Version

$ ansible-galaxy collection list community.general
ansible [core 2.18.6]
  python version = 3.12.3 
  jinja version = 3.1.6
  libyaml = True

Configuration

$ ansible-config dump --only-changed

OS / Environment

Issue reproduced on Ubuntu 22.04 & 24.04. On Fedora (40,41,42), RHEL 9 and Rocky 9.3 we get a behaviour which is more expected.

Steps to Reproduce

On Ubuntu 24.04, install gem and run the following task:

    - name: Try to uninstall json gem from user scope
      community.general.gem:
        name: json
        state: absent
        user_install: true
      register: result

Expected Results

On Rocky, RHEL, Fedora we get this failure:

fatal: [localhost]: FAILED! => {"changed": false, "cmd": "/usr/bin/gem uninstall --norc --all --executable json", "msg": "ERROR:********@ rb_check_realpath_internal - /usr/local/share/gems", "rc": 1, "stderr": "ERROR:  While executing gem ... (Errno::ENOENT)\n    No such file or directory @ rb_check_realpath_internal - /usr/local/share/gems\n", "stderr_lines": ["ERROR:  While executing gem ... (Errno::ENOENT)", "    No such file or directory @ rb_check_realpath_internal - /usr/local/share/gems"], "stdout": "", "stdout_lines": []}

Actual Results

On Ubuntu we get a changed status, even if we run the same task multiple times:

TASK [Try to uninstall json gem from user scope] ******************************************************************************************************************************************************
changed: [localhost]

Additional Details:

On Ubuntu when we run:
sudo gem uninstall json

we get:

Gem json-2.6.3 cannot be uninstalled because it is a default gem

while on Rocky:

ERROR:  While executing gem ... (Errno::ENOENT)
    No such file or directory @ rb_check_realpath_internal - /usr/local/share/gems```

The Ubuntu message likely misleads the module into treating the uninstall as a success, even though nothing has changed. This results in incorrect reporting (changed: true) despite the system state remaining the same.

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