# Fxruby won't play with mac OS 10.5.8 Anyone else notice this? Suggestions? **URL:** \ **Category:** FXRuby\ **Created:** [October 15, 2010, 3:24am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/fxruby-wont-play-with-mac-os-10-5-8-anyone-else-notice-this-suggestions/197481 "2010-10-15T03:24:04Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 2\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![okkezSS](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/o/85f322/32.png) [@okkezSS](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/okkezSS)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2010, 3:24am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/fxruby-wont-play-with-mac-os-10-5-8-anyone-else-notice-this-suggestions/197481/1 "2010-10-15T03:24:04Z")
Hi, I’m new here. We are teaching a class using Ruby and have come to the point where we want to use fxruby with our students. Several of our students have macs for their own use at home. What we have found is that fxruby simply won’t install on system 10.5.8. Short of upgrading to 10.6 (not an option for most) or downgrading an OS update (difficult) there seems to be no fix. The problem seems to revolve around an inability to compile or link libraries within the FOX toolkit itself. Reinstallations of Ruby itself or rubygems from clean source code, different versioning etc. are not a fix. Created a build environment for fxruby manually (as per fxruby user guide) still fails at gem install time - and actually before when trying to ‘make’ FOX. A mac system running 10.6 (Snow Leopard) has no such problems and neither do some previous incarnations of 10.5 before 10.5.8 (I’ve only been able to check two of these however). Eight separate machines running 10.5.8 experience the same problems. I am wondering if this has gone unnoticed as I cannot find mention of it elsewhere. Below is output from log files. If anyone has any suggestions I would greatly appreciate them. * * * fxruby won’t install on mac 10.5.8 I can confirm this problem on eight separate macs running 10.5.8 Ruby gem version and ruby version does not help. Compiling Ruby from source code first and doing a clean install does not help Macports install of Ruby does not help It appears that the problem lies with Fox itself and 10.5.8 A standard gem install yields this * * * ERROR: Error installing fxruby: ERROR: Failed to build gem native extension. /usr/local/bin/ruby extconf.rb install fxruby \*\*\* extconf.rb failed \*\*\* Could not create Makefile due to some reason, probably lack of necessary libraries and/or headers. Check the mkmf.log file for more details. You may need configuration options. Provided configuration options: –with-opt-dir –without-opt-dir –with-opt-include –without-opt-include=${opt-dir}/include –with-opt-lib –without-opt-lib=${opt-dir}/lib –with-make-prog –without-make-prog –srcdir=. –curdir –ruby=/usr/local/bin/ruby –with-fox-dir –without-fox-dir –with-fox-include –without-fox-include=${fox-dir}/include –with-fox-lib –without-fox-lib=${fox-dir}/lib –with-fxscintilla-dir –without-fxscintilla-dir –with-fxscintilla-include –without-fxscintilla-include=${fxscintilla-dir}/include –with-fxscintilla-lib –without-fxscintilla-lib=${fxscintilla-dir}/lib extconf.rb:31:in `find\_installed\_fox\_version’: couldn’t find FOX header files (RuntimeError) from extconf.rb:125 * * * Setting up a mac build environment first (installing .png, .tiff,. .jpeg support for Fox first from source code results in an error when trying to make Fox) which of course in turn results in ld: library not found for -lFOX-1.6 collect2: ld returned 1 exit status make: \*\*\* [fox16.bundle] Error 1 when trying to install the gem. Trying older versions of Fox, no luck. It appears that fox simply won’t build in OS 10.5.8 and thus gem install of fxruby fails. ---
**Author:** ![davidstokar](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/d/4da419/32.png) [@davidstokar](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/davidstokar)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2010, 5:27am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/fxruby-wont-play-with-mac-os-10-5-8-anyone-else-notice-this-suggestions/197481/2 "2010-10-17T05:27:53Z")
I found a fix for this problem. So for any others that encounter it, here is the synopsis. The problem building fxruby seems to be in all versions of leopard, not just 10.5.8 and there is, infact, some documentation of this is one googles fox16.bundle, there are several instances noted. The bottom line is that the only build of fxruby that works on Leopard is one installed using mac-ports. Also, Ruby itself must be installed via macports to pair with this particular build of fxruby. This puts two rubies on a machine. The OS included one in /usr/bin and the new mac-ports one in /opt/local/bin where fxruby also gets installed via macports. This means that you have to now prepend a line to all .rb files: #!/opt/local/bin/ruby in order to use the macports ruby and fox. Or you can edit your path variable via .profile so that /opt/local/bin comes first in the path. Then even IRB will use the macports ruby and you can require ‘fox16’ there too. Simple install 1. Xcode (Leopard version) for GCC 2. Macports (Leopard Version) - remember to update and sync 3. sudo port install ruby 4. sudo port install rb-fxruby 5. note the path when typing which ruby in terminal 6. Change path variable via .profile edit (sudo open -t .profile) if need be All of this is synthesized from several accounts of problems with Leopard and fxruby and suggestions from Lyle J. himself in several posts. I can confirm that these simple steps are all that is needed to get a working ruby with fox on Leopard.