Installing Ruby 1.9.1 on Ubuntu?

Question

I wonder about installing the latest version of Ruby on Ubuntu 9.04. Now I can run through the ./configure and make stuff fine, but what I wonder about: how to avoid conflicts with the packaging system? For example if some other package I install depends on Ruby, wouldn't the package manager install the (outdated) Ruby package and in the worst case overwrite my files?

So I think I need some way to tell Ubuntu that Ruby is in fact already installed?

Answer 1

I got the Ruby specific info from this site. You can install most software in a different directory with the --prefix=/path switch. And it is common to install in /opt/ for everyone on your pc, or in $HOME if it is only for you.

For installing in /opt:

$ ./configure –prefix=/opt/ruby
$ make install

If you want to use the /opt installed ruby, edit you ~/.bashrc and add

export PATH=/opt/ruby/bin/:$PATH

If you don't want to have the custom Ruby build as default, you can add this to your ~/.bashrc instead of the former command

function setupruby {
     export PATH=/opt/ruby/bin/:$PATH
}

Answer 2

Looking through Synaptic it seems like you don't even have to deal with the Multiverse or third-party repositories. But since sudo apt-get install ruby currently installs an alias to ruby1.8, you should install ruby1.9 explicitly – manually or via the repositories – and create the alias ruby yourself.

You may want to put the binary in /usr/bin since that's where the distribution would put it anyway. Anywhere on your PATH is fine, though.

Answer 3

The way I did it was to build it using checkinstall which lets you build a deb package. So I downloaded the Ruby 1.9.1 source, did a "configure" and then "make", did a "checkinstall" and made the package name ruby1.9 so it installs as if it were a new version of ruby 1.9 (as it should).

Answer 4

Save yourself the headache and use RVM (Ruby Version Manager)

Keep in mind, Rails 3 works best with Ruby 1.9.2. Ruby 1.9.2 fixes up quite a few bugs in 1.9.1 and is preferable to running 1.9.1.

With RVM installing 1.9.2 is a breeze.

Answer 5

sudo apt-get install ruby1.9.1-full

(http://www.ruby-lang.org/en/downloads/)

Answer 6

Here is a short and convenient way to install 1.9.1 and to make it default: http://michalf.me/blog:make-ruby-1-9-default-on-ubuntu-9-10-karmic-koala

Answer 7

I created a launchpad ppa for ruby 1.9.2. Details in the links below

http://www.humbug.in/2010/launchpad-ppa-for-ruby-1-9-2-and-some-ruby-bindings/

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:pratikmsinha/ruby192+bindings
cd /etc/apt/sources.list.d/; sudo mv pratikmsinha-ruby192+bindings-lucid.list pratikmsinha-ruby192bindings-lucid.list
sudo aptitude update
sudo aptitude install ruby1.9.2