[ruby-core:70889] How to get started with ruby-core source code development

Hi,

I apologize in advance if this question has been asked and answered 
before. I have scoured the internet, including this group's archives and 
have had no joy in finding the information I seek. Please be kind :).

What I would like to know is how to begin working with the ruby-core 
source code effectively. Obviously, it can be read to reasonable effect 
and understood intellectually to a large degree. I have found Ruby 
Minero Aoki's book, Ruby Hacking Guide to be helpful in this regard. 
However, I am interested in studying it with a debugger and this is more 
challenging than it sounds. I have built the source code on my Macbook 
(Yosemite), but gdb doesn't seem to work on Mac, and LLVM instructions 
are vague in the wild. I have built the 1.7.3 source code on a debian 
jessie VM and used eclipse to step through code where I passed the path 
to irb into ruby as an argument and this "works" ok. So, with high 
hopes, I built the source for 2.2.3 on the debian vm and while it built 
fine, it seems to be looking for gem files. I gather, it needs an 
environment variable or argument, so I will muddle on hoping to work 
past that hurdle. However, I am hoping someone who is actively 
developing the code will share their setup (or point me in the 
appropriate direction to a howto).

Specifically, what do you use to work with the code:
     Which Operating System is hosting the ruby executable?
     Are there environment parameters that need to be set or passed as 
arguments?
     What Tools are useful (eclipse, gdb, valgrind, etc)?
     How do you keep a pristine working environment for your work, chroot?
     Any helpful hints on editing  a c file, rerunning make, running gdb 
and info func myfunc, etc. would be tremendously helpful.

Lastly, I truly appreciate the language y'all have created and look 
forward to developing a deeper understanding of it. Thanks for your 
contributions.

Regards,

Will