From: Tom Cloyd <tomcloyd@...>
Date: 2008-12-16T02:01:02+09:00
Subject: Re: rubygems install confusion - beginner problems

Tom Cloyd wrote:
> Yesterday I compiled ruby 1.8.7, and have verified that it's now 
> resident on my Kubuntu Linux 8.10 OS. All's well, except that I'm in a 
> bit of a muddle with rubygems. It appears that something or other 
> (Philip Gawlowski suggested it might be Amorok) has installed Ruby 1.9 
> on my OS, and with it rubygems 1.2.0. But I want ruby 1.8.7 and 
> rubygems 1.3.1.
>
> Right now, looking at /usr/local/lib/site_ruby, I see BOTH 1.8 and 
> 1.9.0. Makes sense, I guess.
>
> Yesterday I installed rubygems 1.3.1, and things went awry. Ignoring 
> that for now, I just redid the installation, and things went better, 
> indicating that somehow yesterday we had a moment or two of pilot 
> error. Sigh.
>
> Here's the first part of the console output for today install of 
> rubygems v. 1.3.1 -
>
> tomc@tomc-desktop:~/Software archive/Rubygems/rubygems-1.3.1$ sudo 
> ruby setup.rb
> [sudo] password for 
> tomc:                                                      mkdir -p 
> /usr/local/lib/site_ruby/1.8                                          
> mkdir -p 
> /usr/bin                                                              
> mkdir -p /usr/local/lib/site_ruby/1.8/rbconfig
>
> What I have now is this:
>
> tomc@tomc-desktop:~$ which gem
> /usr/bin/gem
> tomc@tomc-desktop:~$ gem -v
> 1.2.0
> tomc@tomc-desktop:~$ which gem1.8
> /usr/bin/gem1.8
> tomc@tomc-desktop:~$ gem1.8 -v
> 1.3.1
>
> When I tried, yesterday, to install the RedCloth gem using "gem 
> install...", the install failed. Something about write permissions. 
> Today, I find that I can install RedCloth just fine, and and just did, 
> using "gem1.8".
>
> So....my question: It would appear that ruby 1.9, when it got 
> installed, by whatever program needed it, also installed rubygems, but 
> not in a way that I can get to, and in any case it isn't the latest 
> version, and finally, it won't let me use it anyway.  I now have ruby 
> 1.8.7, and rubygems 1.3.1 installed, but I have NO confidence that 
> ruby 1.8.7 will access rubygems 1.3.1 should something it's executing 
> need it. I sure hope I'm making sense here.
>
> How in the world can I get this fixed? I badly need to get some gems 
> loaded and get to work again with ruby, and I'm close, but can't close 
> the deal.
>
> Can someone tell me how to tell ruby 1.8.7 to go to the right rubygems 
> when it needs to? I'm sure this involves some environment variable, 
> and I'll keep looking for this, but someone who know could sure help 
> me by simply pointing to it.
>
> Thanks very much for any help you can offer.
>
> t. 
>
Well, the response to this is definitely underwhelming. I'll try to come 
up with more interesting problems in the future!

Meanwhile...it occurred to me that perhaps there IS a rubygems that my 
ruby 1.8.7 can find, and I just verified that in irb:

irb(main):004:0> require 'rubygems'
=> true
irb(main):005:0> require 'RedCloth'
=> true
irb(main):006:0>

I still don't know which version of rubygems is being accessed, though - 
of the two that my system has - 1.2 and 1.3.1. Maybe I can puzzle this 
out somehow. Any help would be appreciated...

t.