Command buffer in irb

Ruby
1

So I decided to try out Ubuntu on a different partition. I built Ruby
1.8.3, and now in irb I can’t hit the up arrow to bring up my last
command(s). Is there a way to set this up? I’m asking because I’m a
terrible typist and require this much-needed tool (crutch).

Thanks,
Todd

2

So I decided to try out Ubuntu on a different partition. I built Ruby
1.8.3, and now in irb I can’t hit the up arrow to bring up my last
command(s). Is there a way to set this up? I’m asking because I’m a
terrible typist and require this much-needed tool (crutch).

Before building ruby, check you have installed the following packages:
libreadline[4 or 5]-dev
libncurses[5 or w5]-dev

Regard,
Yuri Kozlov

3

On Nov 21, 2005, at 10:32 PM, Todd wrote:

So I decided to try out Ubuntu on a different partition. I built Ruby
1.8.3, and now in irb I can’t hit the up arrow to bring up my last
command(s). Is there a way to set this up? I’m asking because I’m a
terrible typist and require this much-needed tool (crutch).

Sounds like you’re missing libreadline

4

Hi,

At Tue, 22 Nov 2005 16:57:23 +0900,
Todd wrote in [ruby-talk:166942]:

Nope. I recompiled, then deleted the whole installation, reunpacked,
recompiled (seeing no warning or error during the compile when it
linked with readline), and even tried “irb --readline” in case that
might help. Still does the same thing. I press up-arrow, and it just
returns ^]]A to the screen, which I’m assuming is the control
character. If anybody can point me into some direction pertaining to
this, it would be much appreciated.

Show ext/readline/mkmf.log file.

5

On 2005-11-22, Eric H. [email protected] wrote:

On Nov 21, 2005, at 10:32 PM, Todd wrote:

So I decided to try out Ubuntu on a different partition. I built Ruby
1.8.3, and now in irb I can’t hit the up arrow to bring up my last
command(s). Is there a way to set this up? I’m asking because I’m a
terrible typist and require this much-needed tool (crutch).

Sounds like you’re missing libreadline

Look in ext/readline/mkmf.log to see why Ruby misses it.

Usually headerfiles are not found. Can’t imagine Ubuntu doing something
special with them, tho.

Doing
require ‘readline’
in Ruby may also tell you something extra. On the command line
ldd /path/to/local/ruby/i?86-linux/readline.so
might help you. Finally, check whether you are running the Ruby you
think
you are running,
type -a ruby
and ruby -v for all of them if it’s more than one.

Hth,
Kero.

6

Yuri Kozlov wrote:

Yuri Kozlov
No, I don’t think that’s it. I have both of those and using the up
arrow in a terminal works fine. It’s just irb. Some kind of character
mapping that isn’t happening? Maybe some error during the compile that
I missed? I’ll try building again and see if I can grab any
errors/warnings.

7

Todd wrote:

Regard,
Yuri Kozlov

No, I don’t think that’s it. I have both of those and using the up
arrow in a terminal works fine. It’s just irb. Some kind of character
mapping that isn’t happening? Maybe some error during the compile that
I missed? I’ll try building again and see if I can grab any
errors/warnings.

Nope. I recompiled, then deleted the whole installation, reunpacked,
recompiled (seeing no warning or error during the compile when it
linked with readline), and even tried “irb --readline” in case that
might help. Still does the same thing. I press up-arrow, and it just
returns ^]]A to the screen, which I’m assuming is the control
character. If anybody can point me into some direction pertaining to
this, it would be much appreciated.

Thanks,
Todd

8

Kero wrote:

Look in ext/readline/mkmf.log to see why Ruby misses it.
type -a ruby
and ruby -v for all of them if it’s more than one.

Hth,
Kero.

Thanks a lot, you guys. mkmf.log revealed that I was missing ncurses
of all things!

Works great now.

Todd