Is the default Ruby install on Mac OSX 10.5 "good enough" for Rails development?

Question

OSX 10.5 comes with Ruby 1.8.6 I believe, but I see a lot of tutorials that recommend installing the latest version of Ruby from source. I've done this in the past and it's caused minor issues down the road if I install something which expects Ruby to be in the default location and it's not (Phusion Passenger pref pane, for instance).

What I'm wondering is if the default version of Ruby is good enough to use for development purposes, so there's no conflicts or multiple versions of Ruby floating about? Obviously the default Rubygems and Rails versions would need to be upgraded, but I'm specifically wondering about the default version of Ruby that comes with 10.5.

Answer 1

1.8.6 will be fine for a local dev box. Personally I always install what's on the production box -- usually Ruby Enterprise -- but yea, if you don't want to deal with the hassles involved with replacing ruby entirely, there's no big disaster waiting for you with the stock stuff.

If you do want to keep current (probably a good idea for a serious application) and make sure you're running the same ruby as your production environment then you could try this tutorial (I've used a previous iteration) on handling those hassles.

Answer 2

The Rails team themselves recommend Ruby 1.8.7 for doing Rails development with any of the most recent releases.

I'd also highly recommend that you use the same version of Ruby for development as what will be in your 'production' environment. Avoids surprises.

Answer 3

The Ruby on Rails download page recommends 1.8.7 but says 1.8.6 still works and I'm finding no problems.

Answer 4

Rails 3 will require Ruby 1.8.7 and we're already recommending 1.8.7 for Rails 2.3.4. I'd strongly recommend upgrading.

Answer 5

I personally do not like the Ruby implementation on the Mac, as I had a a lot of problems with MySql, Postgres, and other gems, always being obscure compilation problems which required me to install XCode and then compile all sorts of obscure libraries. In the end I solved my problems by installing Ubuntu 8.10 on VirtualBox under the Mac, and now everything works great!!!!

Also, when I switched to Snow Leapard I had a lot of the Ruby gems break as well. Also, I would recommend using Ruby 1.9, definitely much faster than 1.8.6 IMHO, again, running best on Ubuntu, NOT Mac.

I guess I would also like to add that many Unix die hards will disagree with me on this post, as things on the Mac CAN be made to work, but I guess I'm just lazy, and would rather have things "work out of the box".

Answer 6

I run REE (Ruby Enterprise Edition) simply because it runs my specs faster than the regular version (about 20%, sometimes more).

It's also nice that it comes with passenger and some of other things you usually want.