Is it currently possible with pre release of ironruby to run rubygems? It seems as if I have to set an environment variable to find them?
You've been able to run rubygems under IronRuby for quite a while now. Simply download and install the latest IronRuby from codeplex, and run igem on the command line
Original Answer:
I'm on that mailing list - to save you the digging, someone asked this a few weeks ago, and this was the answer
The answer (at this point) is no, you can't, but it doesn't seem like it'll be too far away.
PS: listen to curt. He's on the core team for ironruby. <3