# Compile ruby with oniguruma on OS X

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/compile-ruby-with-oniguruma-on-os-x/76978>\
**Category:** Ruby\
**Created:** [November 23, 2006, 12:12am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/compile-ruby-with-oniguruma-on-os-x/76978 "2006-11-23T00:12:11Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Ashley\_M](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/a5b964/32.png) [@Ashley\_M](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Ashley_M)\
**Post date:** [November 23, 2006, 12:12am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/compile-ruby-with-oniguruma-on-os-x/76978/1 "2006-11-23T00:12:11Z")

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Hi

I’ve just got my hands on the latest Mastering Regular Expressions.  
I want to play with some of the clever stuff (eg lookbehinds) in  
ruby. I’m running OS X on my desktop, and my ruby is compiled from  
MacPorts. There’s an oniguruma port, but does anyone know how to  
recompile ruby to use it? Is there a command line switch I can pass  
to the port command?

Thanks  
Ashley

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Ashley\_M](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/a5b964/32.png) [@Ashley\_M](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Ashley_M)\
**Post date:** [November 23, 2006, 1:52am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/compile-ruby-with-oniguruma-on-os-x/76978/2 "2006-11-23T01:52:22Z")

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> I’ve just got my hands on the latest Mastering Regular Expressions.  
> I want to play with some of the clever stuff (eg lookbehinds) in  
> ruby. I’m running OS X on my desktop, and my ruby is compiled from  
> MacPorts. There’s an oniguruma port, but does anyone know how to  
> recompile ruby to use it? Is there a command line switch I can pass  
> to the port command?

I’ve not used MacPorts, but, it is pretty straight forward to build it  
by  
hand:

~/Desktop $ tar xzf ruby-1.8.5.tar.gz  
~/Desktop $ tar xzf onigd2\_5\_8.tar.gz

~/Desktop $ cd oniguruma/  
~/Desktop/oniguruma $ ./configure --with-rubydir=~/Desktop/ruby-1.8.5  
~/Desktop/oniguruma $ make 185  
~/Desktop/oniguruma $ cd …

~/Desktop $ cd ruby-1.8.5  
~/Desktop/ruby-1.8.5 $ ./configure --prefix=/opt/ruby/v1.8.5-oniguruma  
~/Desktop/ruby-1.8.5 $ make  
~/Desktop/ruby-1.8.5 $ sudo make install

~/Desktop/ruby-1.8.5 $ /opt/ruby/v1.8.5-oniguruma/bin/ruby -v  
ruby 1.8.5 (2006-08-25) [powerpc-darwin8.8.0]  
~/Desktop/ruby-1.8.5 $ /opt/ruby/v1.8.5-oniguruma/bin/ruby -e “put s  
Regexp::ENGINE”  
Oniguruma

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Ashley\_M](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/a5b964/32.png) [@Ashley\_M](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Ashley_M)\
**Post date:** [November 24, 2006, 10:51am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/compile-ruby-with-oniguruma-on-os-x/76978/3 "2006-11-24T10:51:16Z")

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On 23 Nov 2006, at 00:51, removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid wrote:

> ~/Desktop/oniguruma $ cd …  
> Oniguruma  
> Ok cheers I’ll try that instead