From: James Gray <james@...>
Date: 2009-08-12T01:05:53+09:00
Subject: Re: Readline not working with Ruby

On Aug 11, 2009, at 10:55 AM, Stewart wrote:

> On Aug 11, 4:27 pm, Brian Candler <b.cand...@pobox.com> wrote:
>> Stewart wrote:
>>> Hey I compiled ruby with readline support. However when i go to  
>>> IRB i
>>> just get jibbrish when i press the up arrow on my keyboard.  Any
>>> suggestions?
>>
>> You need the readline development libraries installed at the time  
>> when
>> you run ./configure. If you're under Linux, the package will be  
>> called
>> something like libreadline5-dev (Ubuntu/Debian) or readline-devel
>> (RedHat or other RPM-based distro)
>>
>> If that's not the problem, then you'll need to be more specific.  
>> What OS
>> are you on? What version of ruby are you building? What makes you  
>> think
>> you built readline support successfully? Look through
>> ext/readline/mkmf.log to see why the extension wasn't built, and  
>> post it
>> here if you don't understand it.
>> --
>> Posted viahttp://www.ruby-forum.com/.
>
> Sorry I should have posted more info
>
> ruby 1.8.7 (2008-08-11 patchlevel 72) [i686-darwin9.6.0]
>
> on mac os 10.5

I'm pretty sure it's not even needed on Mac OS 10.5, as it ships with  
libedit for a compatible replacement.  It won't hurt anything though,  
of course.

What happens if you start irb like this?

   irb --readline

James Edward Gray II