Ruby 1.9.1 isn't recognized on Ubuntu

Question

I wanted to install ruby 1.9.1 instead of the older version so I ran this command on Ubuntu:

sudo apt-get install ruby1.9.1-full

After the install was complete, I got the following error(s):

WARNING: Installing to ~/.gem since /var/lib/gems/1.9.1 and /var/lib/gems/1.9.1/bin aren't both writable. WARNING: You don't have /home/brooks/.gem/ruby/1.9.1/bin in your PATH, gem executables will not run.

When I run "ruby -v" (without the quotes) I get the following response:

bash: /usr/bin/ruby: No such file or directory

So my questions are: 1) Why is it so difficult to install ruby, 2) How can I resolve this problem?

Thank you for your help!

Br

Answer 1

1) Why is it so difficult to install ruby

So difficult?

2) How can I resolve this problem?

Synaptic lists Ruby1.9.1 does that install okay?

Here's the Ruby 1.9.1-p378 tarball - you could try ye olde ./configure && make && make install

Answer 2

After the install was complete, I got the following error(s):

Those aren't errors. They're warnings issued by rubygems. If you want to avoid them run rubygems with sudo or add add /home/brooks/.gem/ruby/1.9.1/bin to your PATH variable. Or if you don't care that you can't run executables installed by gems without specifying the whole path, just ignore them.

When I run "ruby -v" (without the quotes) I get the following response:

bash: /usr/bin/ruby: No such file or directory

Try ruby1.9.1 -v

Answer 3

On my Ubuntu, /usr/bin/ruby is ruby1.8. /usr/bin/ruby1.9 is ruby1.9 and /usr/bin/ruby1.9.1 is ruby1.9.1

It's a good idea to leave /usr/bin/ruby as ruby1.8 as there may be system programs that expect it to be ruby1.8

Answer 4

I used rvm link text to install ruby 1.9.1 and then 1.9.2

Answer 5

To solve this problem:

1. sudo apt-get remove ruby ruby1.9.1-full
2. Download and decompress ftp://ftp.ruby-lang.org//pub/ruby/1.9/ruby-1.9.1-p378.tar.gz.
3. cd ruby-1.9.1-p378
4. ls configure - if there isn't a "file not found" error, skip to step 6.
5. autoconf
6. ./configure - if there are any errors, post them in a comment.
7. make
8. sudo make install
9. which ruby - if there is any output, do not go on.
10. which ruby-1.9.1 or which ruby1.9.1 - There should be output from one of those.
11. cd to the directory revealed by step 10.
12. sudo ln -s <your_ruby> ruby, where <your_ruby> is whichever command in step 10 produced output, either ruby-1.9.1 or ruby1.9.1.
13. repeat step 12, replacing ruby for gem, irb, ri, and rdoc. So one might be sudo ln -s gem-1.9.1 gem.

If you get the same WARNING: Installing to ~/.gem since...:

1. nano ~/.profile
2. append this:

.

export PATH=/home/brooks/.gem/ruby/1.9.1/bin:$PATH
export GEM_HOME=/home/brooks/.gem/ruby/1.9.1

Again, if there are any errors, post them in a comment on this answer.

Answer 6

On my Linux systems I ignore apt-get for Ruby, except for the default ruby package that goes into /usr/bin. I will load any other version, like 1.8.7-head or 1.9.1-whatever using RVM into my own space if it's just for me.

If the ruby being installed is system-wide I will use a source tarball and install into /usr/local/bin and adjust my path or the #! line in the source code to determine which version I want invoked.

In my experience Ruby is easy to install on Ubuntu or any Linux as long as I don't use the packages. I know that hurts the feelings of the package maintainers but I haven't found their fruits to be to my taste very often.

For the average user I highly recommend RVM for development and testing as you can have multiple rubies installed and jump back and forth easily by using a #!/usr/bin/env ruby invocation and letting RVM adjust the version I'll run against by doing a rvm use 1.8.7 or rvm use 1.9.1. Or, you can run commands against each installed instance by using rvm ruby .... RVM is a great piece of software and Wayne should be knighted. :-)