From: Mat Schaffer <schapht@...>
Date: 2006-07-13T22:57:33+09:00
Subject: Re: irb command history problems under Ruby-1.8.4 and Mandriva 2006

On Jul 12, 2006, at 9:28 PM, richard apodaca wrote:
> A few months ago problems were reported with irb's
> command history when Ruby-1.8.4 was compiled on a
> Mandriva 2006 system:
>
> http://blade.nagaokaut.ac.jp/cgi-bin/scat.rb/ruby/ruby-talk/185233
>
> I had exactly the same problem on my Mandiva 2006
> system when upgrading to Ruby-1.8.4. I could find no
> RPM, so I decided to compile myself. That's when the
> fun started.
>
> [snip: wrestling with readline]

If the problem is similar to the above link, you likely have a bad  
installation.  Check to make sure that ./configure found ncurses,  
readline, etc.  The procedure was pretty well discussed in that thread.

The thing that they might have missed on the thread is that on  
systems like mandriva, you usually need the *-dev rpm to compile  
stuff.  readline-dev, for example.
-Mat