From: Steven Lumos <steven@...>
Date: 2007-02-17T07:26:25+09:00
Subject: Re: Optional libraries : openssl, readline, zlib, what is needed?

"An�bal" <anibalrojas@gmail.com> writes:
> Hello,
>
>     Is there a way to know what are the optional libraries should be
> installed to assure that a Ruby installation from sources comes out
> nicely with everything functional?

There seems to be a lot of room for interpretation there.

>     Common missing libraries in my experience, and web searches are:
> zlib-devel (required by gems), openssl-devel required by Capistrano),
> readline-devel (required by IRB and the Rails Console)

It seems like you already have the list given your own interpretation.

>     If those libraries are not present, Ruby will be installed without
> problem after ./configure, make and sudo make install, but later a lot
> of features will be missing.
>
>     Thanks in advance for any suggestion

One nice thing to do (given my own interpretation) is to look through
the ext directory and see what dependencies are *possible*, then
either pick what's important to you, or just go for maximum coverage.
Directories in ext/ tend to be named such that either they have
obvious external dependencies (ext/openssl, ext/readline, ext/tk), or
no external dependencies (ext/syck).  For even more detail, you can
look at the extconf.rb file in each ext directory, e.g.

[/src/lang/ruby/core/ruby-1.8.5-p12]0% cat ext/curses/extconf.rb 
require 'mkmf'

dir_config('curses')
dir_config('ncurses')
dir_config('termcap')
[...]

(So now you know the curses extension will work with curses or
ncurses.)

Steve