From: Juan Zanos Date: 2009-04-17T07:16:05+09:00 Subject: Re: Best way to install Ruby 1.9 On 16 avr. 09, at 16:44, Denis Defreyne wrote: > On Apr 16, 2009, at 7:52 PM, Juan Zanos wrote: > >> I'd like to start using Ruby 1.9 more often. Often I could use >> the extra performance. However, I'm still concerned about bugs >> and incompatibilities. Is there a practical way to use 1.9 in >> such a way that these potential problems are minimized? I mostly >> use Linux and OSX, and on rare occasions Windows. > > > I have installed several Ruby versions in the following directories > (using --prefix): > > /usr/local/pkgs/ruby-1.8.5-p231 > /usr/local/pkgs/ruby-1.8.6-p368 > /usr/local/pkgs/ruby-1.8.7-p72 > /usr/local/pkgs/ruby-1.9.1-p0 > > I have /usr/local/pkgs/ruby-current which is a symlink to one of > the above directories. I also have a script that changes the > symlink so I can switch to any version of Ruby at any time. Lastly, > I have /usr/local/pkgs/ruby-current/bin in my $PATH. > > --program-suffix is IMHO not a great solution. I prefer keeping the > different Ruby versions entirely separate (no shared gems for > instance). In addition, some applications that use Ruby don't work > well with a Ruby installation that has a custom program suffix > (NetBeans jumps to mind). > > Regards, > > Denis > > -- > Denis Defreyne > denis.defreyne@stoneship.org I hadn't realized that different gems might not like --program- suffix. That's good to know. If that's so then the symlink method seems more robust. I'm still not sure how I'd maintain those different version efficiently across different machines. I don't want to introduce too much maintenance or too much testing perplexity. It seems like I'd either have to carefully keep track of tarballs (store, backup, catalog) or do checkouts for each of the separate versions. Every update of a separate tag is then another download for every machine and even then it's difficult to be sure that a particular tag hasn't actually changed.