From: Timothy Hunter <cyclists@...>
Date: 2005-11-10T07:32:12+09:00
Subject: Re: How to install something on MacOS X?

pete boardman wrote:
> So far I've been learning Ruby (1.8.2 as pre-installed on Mac/Tiger)  
> without any installation or command-line worries, but now I've  decided 
> to investigate a library called 'ruby/graphviz'. I downloaded  it but I 
> don't know how to install it. (There are no instructions,  but then that 
> might be because there's a standard way of doing it...)
> 
> I've got these files/directories:
> 
> /ruby-graphviz/lib/
> /ruby-graphviz/IMPORTANT
> /ruby-graphviz/COPYING
> /ruby-graphviz/AUTHORS
> /ruby-graphviz/extconf.rb
> /ruby-graphviz/tests/
> /ruby-graphviz/README
> 
> Only the extconf.rb file looks like it might do something re  
> installation, but when run it says:
> 
>     can't find header files for ruby.
> 
> Suggestions welcomed!
> 
Typically, Ruby extensions that are compiled (as opposed to pure-Ruby 
extensions) will require access to the Ruby header files. You don't get 
these with just the pre-installed Ruby. You'll have to download and 
install Ruby yourself. As part of doing that the installation procedure 
will copy the header files to the directory that extconf.rb looks for 
them in.

I've never installed ruby-graphviz but just looking at extconf.rb it 
seems that (once you have the Ruby headers installed) you'll have to run 
these two commands:

ruby extconf.rb
sudo make install

I won't make any excuses for the lack of documentation - it seems that 
the ruby-graphviz developer assumed that interested parties would be 
motivated and able to figure it out for themselves. FWIW this is a 
fairly standard procedure.

Fortunately ruby-graphviz appears to be simple to install. There are 
some that are much, much harder.

Good luck!