Help updating Ruby (on Rails)

June 23, 2008 7:31 PM

How do I update Ruby/get RoR working? (OS X 10.4).

Ok, I am generally tech savvy, so this is getting frustrating.

I have Mr. Macky here that had ruby 1.8.2 on him when I got home from work. Thinking I'd get a little web appy with some RoR, so I downloaded RubyGems as instructed here.

When I run sudo ruby setup.rb, I get the following error: Expected Ruby version > 1.8.3, was 1.8.2.
Ok, I think, so I go out to download 1.8.6, and follow the instructions as on the above page. Except that these directions install to the ruby-1.8.6 directory on my desktop.

I google, I go through the instructions to update via fink. No dice. ruby -v still gets me 1.8.2; fink complains that ruby is up to date and refuses to update. After more googling and command-lining I somehow revert to version 1.8.1. Which is where I stand at this moment.

Help! I feel like uber-fail. This should have been a 10 minute task at most. If anyone is up for a step by step help session, my email is in my profile--we can exchange IMs or something.

Thanks in advance, guys.

posted by theRussian to Computers & Internet (5 answers total)

I haven't used fink in a long time, but from what I remember it installed everything into a separate tree (/opt/ maybe?) that was off the system path. So, I'd find out where this new ruby is installed and get that on the path.
posted by sideshow at 7:53 PM on June 23, 2008

Which ruby executable are you using - the system one, or the fink one?
posted by TravellingDen at 7:55 PM on June 23, 2008

Best answer: When I wanted to give Ruby a run through I used this package. You'll want to read the whole page though, and follow the seperate instructions to get the documentation.

Here's some older instructions for building an entire rails stack on 10.4.

Here's some newer instructions for building an entire rails stack on 10.5

I have no idea how you managed to downgrade your system, but try the following commands in a terminal to help figure out which ruby in in your path (the first one) and where other ruby binaries might be

$ which ruby
$ whereis ruby
$ locate ruby | less

Finally, if none of those work, you can search your entire drive

$ cd /
$ find . -name "ruby" -print
posted by alana at 8:08 PM on June 23, 2008

Response by poster: Thanks, alan. That first link with the package solved things.

And for posterity(?), or in case anyone was interested,
which ruby returned /sw/bin/ruby (the fink install, I believe)
and whereis ruby resulted in /usr/bin/ruby

Oh, I an I managed to downgrade by throwing in a hash -r somewheres. I realized that I probably should have researched the command before executing it, but I was getting frustrated.

Thanks again MeFi!
posted by theRussian at 8:52 PM on June 23, 2008

This presentation is for Leopard you may find it useful as you progress. Feel free to send me a mefi mail about it.
posted by PueExMachina at 1:46 AM on June 24, 2008