Comments on: Ruby bugs on Leopard

By: Alex

Alex — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 16:49:08 +0000

These simple steps fixed my flawed RubyGems:

sudo su -c
export GEM_HOME=/Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8
gem update –system

(see here: http://blog.0xab.cd/rubygems-misbehaviour-on-leopard)

By: Bill Davenport

Bill Davenport — Sat, 24 Nov 2007 19:47:30 +0000

I don’t think this is just an Apple issue. I updated my Gutsy Gibbon gem package and I had the same issue.

I did not look into it any deeper. I just reinstalled my gem packages and I was back up and running…

BTW: I had to reinstall the Rails gem too.

By: Gems in Leopard : RubyHead

Gems in Leopard : RubyHead — Sat, 24 Nov 2007 14:16:33 +0000

[...] http://www.luisdelarosa.com/2007/11/10/ruby-bugs-on-leopard/ [...]

By: HG

HG — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 15:45:00 +0000

@Thomas and Luis:

There’s a symbolic link ‘user-gems’ which points to /Library/Ruby/Gems. I would think this link is overriding the environment variable settings. (This link is located at /System/Library/Frameworks/Ruby.framework/Versions/Current/usr/lib/ruby.)

As for setting up environment variables in the root account. You could open a root shell with…

sudo su -

This will open a root shell which inherits the environment variables in the root account’s .profile or .tcshrc file which you would maintain in the root account’s home, /var/root.

By: HG

HG — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 15:21:35 +0000

How long do you think Ruby will remain on 1.8? As soon as Ruby is updated to a new major version, you’ll have to change your environment variable settings.

I would expect Apple will implement a system of symbolic links pointing to the latest version of Ruby. That’s how they manage Java. Then all you’d have to do is set GEM_PATH to /System/Library/Frameworks/Ruby.framework/Versions/Current and never have to change your environment variable again.

Apple has implemented this partially in Leopard. Maybe because the system is incomplete, we’re having these problems.

By: Brad Carson

Brad Carson — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 00:35:27 +0000

Following your instructions fixed a “command not found” problem I was having after installing and trying to run piston.

One of the first things I did after getting Leopard was a gem system update and now I’ve got copies of gems EVERYWHERE lol. I’m afraid to delete anything now!

Anyway, thank you so much!

By: luis

luis — Sun, 18 Nov 2007 01:48:12 +0000

matt: If you get that error, I think you need to install Xcode. It's on your Leopard Install Disc. I have to give credit to Jeremy who blogged about this exact error.

By: matt

matt — Sun, 18 Nov 2007 01:33:35 +0000

I’m still having problems. Example:

hume:~ mattleopard$ gem update fastthread
Updating installed gems…
Attempting remote update of fastthread
Select which gem to install for your platform (universal-darwin9.0)
1. fastthread 1.0.1 (ruby)
2. fastthread 1.0 (ruby)
3. fastthread 1.0 (mswin32)
4. fastthread 0.6.4.1 (ruby)
5. fastthread 0.6.4.1 (mswin32)
6. Skip this gem
7. Cancel installation
> 1
Building native extensions. This could take a while…
ERROR: While executing gem … (Gem::Installer::ExtensionBuildError)
ERROR: Failed to build gem native extension.

ruby extconf.rb update fastthread
can’t find header files for ruby.

Gem files will remain installed in /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/fastthread-1.0.1 for inspection.
Results logged to /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/fastthread-1.0.1/ext/fastthread/gem_make.out

By: luis

luis — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 16:11:26 +0000

Good catch. I noticed that I didn’t have to use sudo after updating rubygems and setting GEM_HOME and GEM_PATH. Thanks for pointing out that sudo doesn’t preserve those variables.
Now I enjoy leaving out sudo and just doing “gem install …”

By: Thomas Krajacic

Thomas Krajacic — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 16:03:53 +0000

actually I know the problem now exactly.
The problem is, that the sudo command doesn’t share the environment with the user space. adding the GEM_HOME and PATH variables to bash or tcsh in my case doesn’t solve the problem.
I don’t know how to add environment variables to the root users environment. (i also added them to .MacosX/environment.plist, but that just makes them available to other applications outside the shell)

I actually can install the gems fine just without using sudo, as the regular user has access to the gems directory, and everything works fine.

hope someone can clarify this a bit. I also don’t know if its a problem installing the gems without sudo now, but it seems to work just fine