You can install a gem from github or filesystem. If the gem has been checked out from git or somehow already on the file system, you could install it using
gem install --local path_to_gem/filename.gem
Installing gem from github. Download the sources from github
mkdir newgem
cd newgem
git clone https://urltogem.git
Build the gem
gem build GEMNAME.gemspec
gem install gemname-version.gem