From: Eric Hodel Date: 2008-07-03T09:35:11+09:00 Subject: Re: Missing zlib on latest ruby version On Jul 1, 2008, at 22:59 PM, Jeffrey 'jf' Lim wrote: > On Wed, Jul 2, 2008 at 11:49 AM, fedzor wrote: >> You all know the error. missing require, blah blah. Seriously, >> nothing new >> here. here's the scoop >> >> But I found that zlib was missing from the latest ruby version on my >> Ubuntu. I download and install from source the latest version, and >> while >> installing rubygems, it complains of missing zlib! >> >> > ruby doesnt depend on zlib, so ubuntu's correct. Only rubygems does. > apt-get > install zlib1g Much like the readline, iconv, and openssl bindings, the zlib binding is a part of ruby and like the others I mentioned, gets fairly frequent use. In these respects, ruby (specifically, language, library, and user community) does depend on them. Furthermore, these C libraries are usually available on most operating systems, so I find it reasonable to assume their ruby bindings are available. Making zlib (and similar libraries) an additional component that must be found by the user causes confusion and creates a support burden for people who have no idea what to do to fix it. I've had various tickets filed against RubyGems because zlib or openssl or rdoc was missing. It isn't my job to figure out a certain platform requires extra installations just to get basic ruby functionality, nor is it my job to track changes to package names and installer arguments per platform, but I end up being the one who has to deal with it. I would be much happier if everybody's ruby worked reasonably the same when they installed ruby, no matter the package system. In this case, the problem was missing zlib headers, which falls under the same general category of a support problem foisted onto undeserving project maintainers.