Installing Ruby on Rails 1.1.4 on Mac OS X TigerEdit

Created , updated

To install Ruby on Rails using RubyGems, the standard PATH environment variable must be overridden to ensure that the custom local copy of Ruby (version 1.8.4) is used instead of the default system install (version 1.8.2).

The first step is to look at the current PATH setting:

echo $PATH

The output should be similar to:

/bin:/sbin:/usr/bin:/usr/sbin:/Users/wincent/bin:/usr/local/bin:/Developer/Tools:/usr/X11R6/bin:/usr/local/mysql/bin

Set the new PATH value, rearranging the order so that /usr/local/bin appears first in the list:

PATH=/usr/local/bin:/bin:/sbin:/usr/bin:/usr/sbin:/Users/wincent/bin:/Developer/Tools:/usr/X11R6/bin:/usr/local/mysql/bin

Confirm that the order is correct:

echo $PATH

The output should resemble this:

/usr/local/bin:/bin:/sbin:/usr/bin:/usr/sbin:/Users/wincent/bin:/Developer/Tools:/usr/X11R6/bin:/usr/local/mysql/bin

Go ahead with the Ruby on Rails install:

sudo gem install rails --include-dependencies

Installation transcript

Bulk updating Gem source index for: http://gems.rubyforge.org
Successfully installed rails-1.1.4
Successfully installed rake-0.7.1
Successfully installed activesupport-1.3.1
Successfully installed activerecord-1.14.3
Successfully installed actionpack-1.12.3
Successfully installed actionmailer-1.2.3
Successfully installed actionwebservice-1.1.4
Installing ri documentation for rake-0.7.1...
Installing ri documentation for activesupport-1.3.1...
Installing ri documentation for activerecord-1.14.3...
Installing ri documentation for actionpack-1.12.3...
Installing ri documentation for actionmailer-1.2.3...
Installing ri documentation for actionwebservice-1.1.4...
Installing RDoc documentation for rake-0.7.1...
Installing RDoc documentation for activesupport-1.3.1...
Installing RDoc documentation for activerecord-1.14.3...
Installing RDoc documentation for actionpack-1.12.3...
Installing RDoc documentation for actionmailer-1.2.3...
Installing RDoc documentation for actionwebservice-1.1.4...

Setting up the environment

For Rails to actually work you’ll need to make changes to your PATH and RUBYLIB environment variables. I have the following in my ~/.bash_profile for this purpose:

# /usr/local/bin has to come first so that custom Ruby install will be used (1.8.4)
PATH=/usr/local/bin:$PATH:$HOME/bin:/Developer/Tools:/usr/X11R6/bin
PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/mysql/bin
export PATH

# for Ruby on Rails
RUBYLIB="/usr/local/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8:/usr/local/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/i686-darwin8.7.1:/usr/local/lib/ruby/1.8:/usr/local/lib
/ruby/1.8/i686-darwin8.7.1"
export RUBYLIB

Update: RUBYLIB with Mac OS X 10.4.8

I later (March 2007) found that this RUBYLIB export prevented my new Ruby 1.8.6 install from working and removed it from my .bash_profile. See "Building and installing Ruby 1.8.6 on Mac OS X Tiger" for more information.

See also

An alternative approach

http://hivelogic.com/articles/2005/12/01/ruby_rails_lighttpd_mysql_tiger

Using the already downloaded archives:

tar zxvf readline-5.1.tar.gz
cd readline-5.1/
./configure
make
sudo make install

tar zxvf ruby-1.8.4.tar.gz
cd ruby-1.8.4/
./configure --enable-pthread --with-readline-dir=/usr/local
make
sudo make install
make check

When I try to follow those instructions I get a failure during sudo make check step:

  1) Failure:
test_delete(TestDBM) [./dbm/test_dbm.rb:332]:
<DBMError> exception expected but none was thrown.

  2) Failure:
test_s_open_error(TestSDBM) [./sdbm/test_sdbm.rb:123]:
<Errno::EACCES> exception expected but none was thrown.

1313 tests, 14455 assertions, 2 failures, 0 errors
make: *** [test-all] Error 1

But not when doing a make check (without sudo):

1313 tests, 14456 assertions, 0 failures, 0 errors

Then:

sudo /usr/local/bin/ruby setup.rb

And I get this error:

Bulk updating Gem source index for: http://gems.rubyforge.org
ERROR:  While executing gem ... (ArgumentError)
    syntax error on line 153073, col 20: `
    executables:'

Which is the same error as I was getting before when trying to do any remote operations with gem. Funnily enough this was working a few days ago. Now neither my hand-installed copy of RubyGems nor the version bundled with Locomotive works.

Curiously, running sudo gem update fixed all of these warnings:

sudo gem update
sudo gem install rails --include-dependencies
sudo gem install sqlite3-ruby

Note, however, that I still can’t run any unit tests:

script/generate model User
ruby test/unit/user_test.rb

Produces:

Loaded suite test/unit/user_test
Started
E/usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/sqlite3-ruby-1.1.0/lib/sqlite3/errors.rb:94:in `check': cannot rollback - no transaction is active (SQLite3::SQLException)
        from /usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/sqlite3-ruby-1.1.0/lib/sqlite3/resultset.rb:76:in `check'
        from /usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/sqlite3-ruby-1.1.0/lib/sqlite3/resultset.rb:68:in `commence'
        from /usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/sqlite3-ruby-1.1.0/lib/sqlite3/resultset.rb:61:in `initialize'
        from /usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/sqlite3-ruby-1.1.0/lib/sqlite3/statement.rb:158:in `execute'
        from /usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/sqlite3-ruby-1.1.0/lib/sqlite3/database.rb:211:in `execute'
        from /usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/sqlite3-ruby-1.1.0/lib/sqlite3/database.rb:186:in `prepare'
        from /usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/sqlite3-ruby-1.1.0/lib/sqlite3/database.rb:210:in `execute'
        from /usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/sqlite3-ruby-1.1.0/lib/sqlite3/database.rb:620:in `rollback'
         ... 13 levels...
        from /usr/local/lib/ruby/1.8/test/unit/autorunner.rb:200:in `run'
        from /usr/local/lib/ruby/1.8/test/unit/autorunner.rb:13:in `run'
        from /usr/local/lib/ruby/1.8/test/unit.rb:285
        from test/unit/user_test.rb:7

The database file does exist (created manually using sqlite3 db/test.sqlite3 and .schema to force changes to be flushed to disk) and the config/database.yml file contains this:

test:
  adapter: sqlite3
  dbfile: db/test.sqlite3

If I change:

self.use_transactional_fixtures = true

To:

self.use_transactional_fixtures = false

In test/test_helper.rb then I get a different error:

Loaded suite test/unit/user_test
Started
E
Finished in 0.128909 seconds.

  1) Error:
test_truth(UserTest):
ActiveRecord::StatementInvalid: SQLite3::SQLException: no such table: users: DELETE FROM users WHERE 1=1
    /usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/activerecord-1.14.3/lib/active_record/connection_adapters/abstract_adapter.rb:120:in `log'
    /usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/activerecord-1.14.3/lib/active_record/connection_adapters/sqlite_adapter.rb:137:in `execute'
    /usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/activerecord-1.14.3/lib/active_record/connection_adapters/sqlite_adapter.rb:329:in `catch_schema_changes'
    /usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/activerecord-1.14.3/lib/active_record/connection_adapters/sqlite_adapter.rb:137:in `execute'
    /usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/activerecord-1.14.3/lib/active_record/connection_adapters/sqlite_adapter.rb:147:in `delete'
    /usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/activerecord-1.14.3/lib/active_record/fixtures.rb:283:in `delete_existing_fixtures'
    /usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/activerecord-1.14.3/lib/active_record/fixtures.rb:256:in `create_fixtures'
    /usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/activerecord-1.14.3/lib/active_record/fixtures.rb:256:in `create_fixtures'
    /usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/activerecord-1.14.3/lib/active_record/connection_adapters/abstract/database_statements.rb:51:in `transaction'
    /usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/activerecord-1.14.3/lib/active_record/fixtures.rb:255:in `create_fixtures'
    /usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/activerecord-1.14.3/lib/active_record/base.rb:794:in `silence'
    /usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/activerecord-1.14.3/lib/active_record/fixtures.rb:248:in `create_fixtures'
    /usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/activerecord-1.14.3/lib/active_record/fixtures.rb:565:in `load_fixtures'
    /usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/activerecord-1.14.3/lib/active_record/fixtures.rb:521:in `setup'

1 tests, 0 assertions, 0 failures, 1 errors

Solution:

RAILS_ENV='test'
export RAILS_ENV
rake migrate
ruby test/unit/user_test.rb

Evidently creating the database is not enough. You have to do a rake migrate as well.