Building Ruby From Source?

[Tim Apple]

[Note: parts of this message were removed to make it a legal post.]

I am new to Ruby, but fairly used to Linux. I was wondering if those
developing on Linux compile ruby, gems, and any other libs you may use from
source, or do you use the premade packages provided by your distro? Just
curious...

Tim Apple

 

[David A. Black]

Hi --

I am new to Ruby, but fairly used to Linux. I was wondering if those
developing on Linux compile ruby, gems, and any other libs you may use from
source, or do you use the premade packages provided by your distro? Just
curious...

I always compile Ruby from source, partly just to have control over
exactly what I've got and partly as a vote of no-confidence in some of
the silly packaging practices (splitting Ruby up into separate
packages).


David

--
David A. Black / Ruby Power and Light, LLC
Ruby/Rails consulting & training: http://www.rubypal.com
Now available: The Well-Grounded Rubyist (http://manning.com/black2)
Training! Intro to Ruby, with Black & Kastner, September 14-17
(More info: http://rubyurl.com/vmzN)

 

[Tim Hunter]

I am new to Ruby, but fairly used to Linux. I was wondering if those
developing on Linux compile ruby, gems, and any other libs you may use
from
source, or do you use the premade packages provided by your distro? Just
curious...

Tim Apple

I build from source because I develop a fairly widely used Ruby
extension and I want to test it with multiple versions of Ruby. Building
from source lets me install multiple distinct versions of Ruby by
specifying the target directory with the --prefix option on the
configure script.

But if you just want to write a little Ruby code and the package version
is sufficient for your needs, why not use it? The only concern I'd have
is that the version of Ruby in the package has a bug for which you need
the fix.

 

[David A. Black]

Hi --



I always compile Ruby from source, partly just to have control over
exactly what I've got and partly as a vote of no-confidence in some of
the silly packaging practices (splitting Ruby up into separate
packages).

Oh, also: you can't use premade packages for all of these:
http://ruby-versions.net


David

--
David A. Black / Ruby Power and Light, LLC
Ruby/Rails consulting & training: http://www.rubypal.com
Now available: The Well-Grounded Rubyist (http://manning.com/black2)
Training! Intro to Ruby, with Black & Kastner, September 14-17
(More info: http://rubyurl.com/vmzN)

 

[James Britt]

I am new to Ruby, but fairly used to Linux. I was wondering if those
developing on Linux compile ruby, gems, and any other libs you may use from
source, or do you use the premade packages provided by your distro? Just
curious...

I build from source on Kubuntu. The pre-built packages tend to be too
out of date, and compiling from source is easy.


--
James Britt

www.jamesbritt.com - Playing with Better Toys
www.ruby-doc.org - Ruby Help & Documentation
www.rubystuff.com - The Ruby Store for Ruby Stuff
www.neurogami.com - Smart application development

 

[Gregory Brown]

I am new to Ruby, but fairly used to Linux. I was wondering if those
developing on Linux compile ruby, gems, and any other libs you may use from
source, or do you use the premade packages provided by your distro? Just
curious...

I always build from source because I've never personally ran into
snags doing it, and it gives me full control.

-greg

 

[Simon Krahnke]

I build from source on Kubuntu. The pre-built packages tend to be too
out of date, and compiling from source is easy.

The current Debian lenny packages of Ruby 1.8 are 1.8.7, how out-of-date
is that?

I still use Ruby 1.8.5, that so far hasn't been a problem for me.

mfg, simon .... one voice for premade packages