From: James Edward Gray II <james@...>
Date: 2004-10-02T01:25:56+09:00
Subject: Re: irb/completion

On Oct 1, 2004, at 11:13 AM, Brian McCallister wrote:

> Hmm, any reason I'd be unable to use 'irb/completion' out of the box 
> in 1.8.2-preview2 ?
>
> It likewise ignores the request to use it in my .irbrc
>
> [mccallister@kite ~/src/eva]$ /usr/local/ruby-1.8.2-preview2/bin/irb
> irb(main):001:0> require 'irb/completion'
> => false
>
> [mccallister@kite ~/src/eva]$ ruby -v
> ruby 1.8.2 (2004-07-29) [powerpc-darwin7.5.0]

Yes, this was just covered here recently.  Short story:

1.  irb/completion requires GNU's readline lib.

2.  Mac OS X does ship with the lib, but not the header files for Ruby 
to find in it's build process.

3.  So, you either need to bring readline support to your Ruby install, 
described here:

http://richkilmer.blogs.com/ether/2003/10/building_ruby_1.html

Or, build and install GNU readline and then Rebuild your Ruby install 
so it will notice it.

I used the latter and it worked like a charm.

Good luck.

James Edward Gray II