I am setting up ruby on a new ubuntu system and was wondering if it
matters
whether things like rails and various ruby packages are installed via
ubuntu’s package manager (Synaptic) or via RubyGems.
Devi Web D. wrote:
I am setting up ruby on a new ubuntu system and was wondering if it matters
whether things like rails and various ruby packages are installed via
ubuntu’s package manager (Synaptic) or via RubyGems.
My experience with Ruby on Ubuntu (or pretty much any *nix system) is
that installing from source works best in the long run.
Yes, it is more work up front. But it makes it easier to stay on top of
the latest versions.
–
James B.
www.risingtidesoftware.com - Wicked Cool Coding
www.jamesbritt.com - Playing with Better Toys
The main reason I am asking is I read somewhere that the performance of
Firefox is different in the packages versus building it yourself.
That applies to Ruby too. I forget the precise stats, but
Alex
Changing the pthreads flags may break Tk, if I recall correctly.
You can also gain performance by using processor specific optimizations,
The Gentoo Linux | CustomEssayMeister.com has a pretty good list for all kind
of
processors.
One thing you will want to look out for is that ruby will compile fine
without a few libraries headers that ubuntu does not install by default,
but
that you’ll end up missing functionality. You will want to install
zlib1g-dev, libsyck0-dev, libgdbm-dev and libreadline5-dev, though that
is
not an exhaustive list. Otherwise, quite a few gems and even stock
functionality will complain - and irb won’t support history browsing
without
readline, for example.
HTH,
Felix
Devi Web D. wrote:
The main reason I am asking is I read somewhere that the performance of
Firefox is different in the packages versus building it yourself.
That applies to Ruby too. I forget the precise stats, but self-compiled
Ruby is significantly faster than the packaged version (it’s the
–enable-pthreads flag that does it, IIRC). Ubuntu has also been known
to package broken gems in the past, and the packagers can’t/shouldn’t
have to /don’t bother keeping up with the latest releases. You’ll avoid
the most problems if you do it all yourself.