Finally came back to this problem, got it working through some trial and error. I also needed to run jruby with the -J-Djava.library.path=[GAMSDIR]/apifiles/Java/api
flag, and add [GAMSDIR]/apifiles/Java/api/GAMSJavaAPI.jar
to the classpath.
Once this is all in place, you can run gams models from ruby scripts:
import com.gams.api.GAMSWorkspace
import com.gams.api.GAMSJob
import com.gams.api.GAMSVariable
import com.gams.api.GAMSVariableRecord
import com.gams.api.GAMSWorkspace
ws = GAMSWorkspace.new
j1 = ws.addJobFromGamsLib('trnsport')
j1.run
j1.out_db.get_variable('x').each_entry do |rec|
puts "x(#{rec.get_keys[0]}, #{rec.get_keys[1]}): level = #{rec.get_level}, marginal = #{rec.get_marginal}"
end