[ruby-core:86547] [Ruby trunk Feature#14656] Improve mkmf error message when ruby.h is missing

Issue #14656 has been updated by shevegen (Robert A. Heiler).


nobu already solved this, but I wanted to make one comment to:

>    Maybe the error message could hint at this solution? 

I think one problem is that the splitting of packages is done
by distributions, not by the ruby core team or anyone else.

When I compile ruby from source, I do have mkmf available.

In an ideal world, people would look at whoever made the 
changes to ruby (e. g. by removing mkmf and putting it into
a separate package) rather than upstream developers who did
not make the change. But I can also understand end users being
frustrated; that has been one reason why we have projects such
as rvm, chruby and so forth.

----------------------------------------
Feature #14656: Improve mkmf error message when ruby.h is missing
https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/issues/14656#change-71487

* Author: peyremorgan (Morgan Peyre)
* Status: Closed
* Priority: Normal
* Assignee: 
* Target version: 
----------------------------------------
Without the development tools, trying to install most gems results in the following error :

~~~
mkmf.rb can't find header files for ruby at #{$hdrdir}/ruby.h
~~~

Copy-pasting the error into a search engine yields numerous versions of the same solution : installing the ruby development environment (package `ruby-dev` or `ruby-devel` on most Linux distributions) solves the issue.

Maybe the error message could hint at this solution? I found the following line further down in the same file that could be added after the current error message :

~~~
You have to install development tools first.
~~~



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