From: Robert Klemme <shortcutter@...>
Date: 2011-09-08T22:11:14+09:00
Subject: Re: help with LOAD_PATH when building from source on Mac OSX Lion

On Thu, Sep 8, 2011 at 2:06 PM, James French
<James.French@naturalmotion.com> wrote:
>
> On 8 Sep 2011, at 12:23, Marc Heiler wrote:
>
>> Why not pass the --prefix to configure when compiling?
>>
>>  ./configure --prefix=~/buildtools/ruby/1.9.2
>
> Thanks, I wasn't sure how to do that. It required an absolute path but /Users/~/buildtools/ruby/1.9.2

You could also do

./configure "--prefix=${HOME}/buildtools/ruby/1.9.2"

assuming your shell expands ~ to the home directory.

> did the trick and it can now load standard library files. Still having issues with gems but I am unblocked for the moment so thanks!
>
> I must say I'm surprised ruby doesn't set up its default paths relative to the ruby executable to prevent hard coding of location - means that we have to maintain a company standard folder (there are other folders before build tools that I didn't mention). Not a huge deal though.

Well, both approaches have pros and cons.  If you create a symlink to
the ruby executable from another directory then relative paths won't
work.  And since usually the installation is done once on a system and
not changed there is really no point in having relative paths.  They
might also open security holes.  All in all to me it seems the
approach taken is reasonable.

Kind regards

robert

-- 
remember.guy do |as, often| as.you_can - without end
http://blog.rubybestpractices.com/