# Failed to install 'rubynode' gem after Snow Leopard upgrade

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/failed-to-install-rubynode-gem-after-snow-leopard-upgrade/192860>\
**Category:** Ruby\
**Created:** [August 7, 2010, 3:37am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/failed-to-install-rubynode-gem-after-snow-leopard-upgrade/192860 "2010-08-07T03:37:10Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![r-a-mueller](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/r/dfb087/32.png) [@r-a-mueller](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/r-a-mueller)\
**Post date:** [August 7, 2010, 3:37am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/failed-to-install-rubynode-gem-after-snow-leopard-upgrade/192860/1 "2010-08-07T03:37:10Z")

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Hi,

I’ve just upgraded to Mac OS X 10.6, and was following the instructions  
on the Rails blog  
([Ruby on Rails — Upgrading to Snow Leopard](http://weblog.rubyonrails.org/2009/8/30/upgrading-to-snow-leopard)) to  
upgrade my gems etc. This seemed to work OK, with the exception of the  
‘rubynode’ gem which failed to reinstall. This is on a standard Mac OS X  
install of Ruby (I don’t have MacPorts or anything like that installed).  
The errors were are follows:

ERROR: Error installing rubynode:  
ERROR: Failed to build gem native extension.

# /System/Library/Frameworks/Ruby.framework/Versions/1.8/usr/bin/ruby extconf.rb ==================== ERROR ===================== Please set RUBY\_SOURCE\_DIR to the source path of ruby 1.8.7 (2009-06-12)!

Could anyone tell me how to fix this? I don’t know where I can set  
RUBY\_SOURCE\_DIR, or what I should set it to. I did find another post on  
this forum ([Rubynode won't build on Leopard Ruby - Ruby - Ruby-Forum](http://www.ruby-forum.com/topic/143021)) with the same error,  
but it’s not clear to me how that was resolved.

Failing that, perhaps it I could just uninstall this gem. Could anyone  
tell me if I’m actually likely to need it for Rails development?

Thanks,  
Richard

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![r-a-mueller](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/r/dfb087/32.png) [@r-a-mueller](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/r-a-mueller)\
**Post date:** [August 7, 2010, 5:35am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/failed-to-install-rubynode-gem-after-snow-leopard-upgrade/192860/2 "2010-08-07T05:35:44Z")

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On Aug 6, 2010, at 18:37 , Richard M\_ wrote:

> Failing that, perhaps it I could just uninstall this gem. Could anyone  
> tell me if I’m actually likely to need it for Rails development?

No, you’ll likely never need it for rails development. AFAIK, it isn’t  
used as a dependency on any major libraries.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![r-a-mueller](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/r/dfb087/32.png) [@r-a-mueller](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/r-a-mueller)\
**Post date:** [August 7, 2010, 5:46am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/failed-to-install-rubynode-gem-after-snow-leopard-upgrade/192860/3 "2010-08-07T05:46:17Z")

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Hi,

i think ruby’s source isn’t included in osx.

On Saturday, August 7, 2010, Richard M\_ [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid)  
wrote:

> Could anyone tell me how to fix this? I don’t know where I can set  
> RUBY\_SOURCE\_DIR, or what I should set it to. I did find another post on  
> this forum ([Rubynode won't build on Leopard Ruby - Ruby - Ruby-Forum](http://www.ruby-forum.com/topic/143021)) with the same error,  
> but it’s not clear to me how that was resolved.

Build ruby yourself to solve this problem.

Download tarball of ruby and extract it,  
and run the following line (replace some paths for your environment.):

cd /path/to/ruby-src  
./configure --enable-shared --prefix=$HOME/local  
make && make install

* * *

ruby will be installed to prefix ($HOME/local is in this example),  
so you need to put the prefix path to $PATH in your shell.  
And you must install rubygems also if you’re using ruby1.8.x .

Thanks,

sorah