From: thermowax@...
Date: 2009-02-19T23:34:56+09:00
Subject: Re: I have to be missing something simple here.

On Feb 18, 7:58 pm, Tom Cloyd <tomcl...@comcast.net> wrote:
> thermo...@gmail.com wrote:
> > I have some code that was written in the Ruby-1.8ish era.  However,
> > the newer versions append the version number to all library/etc
> > filenames, which is causing problems- for example, "/usr/local/bin/
> > ruby" no longer exists, it's "/usr/local/bin/ruby19".  I'd stay with
> > 1.8 but when I try to run the software on the new system I'm trying to
> > set up (FreeBSD) it complains that gzip library isn't present.
>
> > I know from Googling that zlib was included with Ruby starting with
> > 1.8, so I'm not quite sure what's going on there.  Rather than fiddle
> > with that, I thought I'd just get a newer version (1.9.1 is the
> > current for FreeBSD 7.1, IIRC), but then I run into the above
> > mentioned filename problems.
>
> > Am I missing something?  Surely it should be more backward compatible
> > than that... I thought the problem might be that the FreeBSD packages
> > were broken, but compiling from source results in the same problem.
> > Should I just set up links or rename everything to the old filenames?
> > Was there some drastic change in Ruby that necessitated the versions
> > not commingle?  Argh.
>
> > Thanks for any input,
> > Jim
>
> Jim, I'm competent only to comment on part of your problem. I know this:
> If you have Ruby 1.8.x installed, and then also install 1.9.x, the
> installation process will keep them separate by appending ...1.9 to all
> (I HOPE all!) the 1.9 components. That's what happened on my Kubuntu
> Linux OS. What implications this might have for the internals of various
> Ruby scripts of which any particular piece of software s composed I can
> only conjecture.
>
> I think you may have two Ruby's installed on your OS. For the present, I
> don't think there's a realistic alternative to this setup. I'm NOT sure
> how best to manage it, however. Still learning.
>
> t.


Tom-

Thanks for the input.  Nope, only one Ruby- I've tried it several
different ways.  I did notice in the changelog for 1.9.0 that there
are several "severe" incompatible changes, so perhaps that's why
they're segregating the versions like that.  (I'd love to hear it if
anyone knows!)

For the moment I'm going to fall back to 1.8.0.111 and try to get zlib
working.  My other concern is that I don't know if all the current
extension binding packages (pango, glib2, gtk2, etc etc) are going to
play nicely with it.  Sigh.  I wouldn't mind _that_ much except
finding older versions of this stuff can be an immense pain in the
butt, and it's a crap shoot which versions work together.  Hmm, a
compatibility table would be nice...

Thanks again-
Jim