Installing to a separate --path is generally my preferred method, but it's not a requirement for just getting the project set up.  I'm thinking of just the minimal setup steps required to be able to run tests and work.  Isolating the gems into a separate path is more for the benefit of not interfering with other projects which might not be using bundler.

We could provide the minimal steps, and then note the --path variant and what it's benefit is?

One other question though --path .bundle/gems installs into bundler's own .bundle directory; is that going to collide with other bundler activities, like installing from git repositories?