[PLUG] RH8 Ruby

[Phil Tomson]

On Tue, 10 Dec 2002, Bill Spears wrote:

> On Tuesday 10 December 2002 04:25 pm, you wrote:
> > On Tue, 10 Dec 2002, Bill Spears wrote:
> > > Anybody playing/using Ruby?
> >
> > I do a lot of programming in Ruby - it's currently my favorite language.
> >
> > > Here's my situation. On one 'puter I built Ruby and a program called irb
> > > works fine.
> > >
> > > On other 'puter, I installed rpms and irb.rb is there but doesn't run.
> > > Says IRB is not initialized. At this point I don't know what that is.
> > > Anyone know?
> >
> > Hmmm....  What version of Ruby does the rpm install? ( ruby -v will tell
> > you).  Where'd you get the rpm?
>
> I got a bunch of related ruby rpms at rpmfind.net.
> >
> > Generally, I prefer to build Ruby from source (actually, I prefer to
> > build most things from source anymore).  I'd recommend going to:
> > http://www.ruby-lang.org and downloading the 1.6.7 source and compiling it
> > (./configure, make, make install).
>
> I just did that and irb works fine now. I'm becoming a convert to building,
> although as I watch the messages fly by, I think I have no idea what I'm
> doing.

Not to worry.  For most things it's:
./configure
make
make test (optional)
make install (as root)

Not much to it really.  The messages flying by are usually messages from
the C/C++ compiler - unless there's an error reported you won't have to
worry about them.  When errors are reported, it is often nice to know a
little about make and C/C++.

And it really doesn't take long to build Ruby - there's only about 1MB of
source code.

Anyway, good to hear that the irb problem went away.  If you're interested
we've got a local Ruby user's group we call PDX.rb and we meet every month
(had our December meeting last night).  You can subscribe to our mailing
list by sending an email to: pdxruby-subscribe at kohalabs.com

Phil