Ruby Installation

[Tom Mac]

Hi
I have installed ruby from fedora repository (fedora12) with

yum install ruby ruby-devel ruby-docs ruby-irb ruby-libs ruby-mode
ruby-rdoc ruby-ri

And I got ruby --version
ruby 1.8.6 (2009-08-04 patchlevel 383) [i386-linux]

This I did 2 months back . Now I am asked to repeat this process on
another machine. So my question is where can I find the same above
version with same patch . I looked in
www.ruby-lang.org It says about 1.8.7 and 1.9.1

My second question is if I install 1.8.7 from source on the next
machine, will the application work? So what is the preferred way
Installing ruby from source or from a repository like fedora in my case?


Thanks
Tom

 

[Brian Candler]

Hi
I have installed ruby from fedora repository (fedora12) with

yum install ruby ruby-devel ruby-docs ruby-irb ruby-libs ruby-mode
ruby-rdoc ruby-ri

And I got ruby --version
ruby 1.8.6 (2009-08-04 patchlevel 383) [i386-linux]

This I did 2 months back . Now I am asked to repeat this process on
another machine. So my question is where can I find the same above
version with same patch . I looked in
www.ruby-lang.org It says about 1.8.7 and 1.9.1

ftp.ruby-lang.org has all the previous version releases.

My second question is if I install 1.8.7 from source on the next
machine, will the application work?

Probably. There are a number of changes in the ruby language for 1.8.7,
such that a program written for 1.8.7 may well not work in 1.8.6, but
one written for 1.8.6 probably works in 1.8.7.

So what is the preferred way
Installing ruby from source or from a repository like fedora in my case?

If your distribution has a decent ruby repo, usually it's a good idea to
use that. Your distribution should be keeping track of things like
security updates and you will automatically get a fixed version if you
need it. It also saves hassles in compilation (e.g. if you don't have
the openssl-dev or zlib-dev packages installed when building yourself,
then important ruby extensions won't be built)

HTH,

Brian.