This error means you did not have the required dependencies to install
readline during installation of ruby. If you can find the location of
the ruby source files in your system, you can go to the ext/readline
folder. In there there should be an extconf.rb which you can run with
ruby extconf.rb
This will fail but it will tell you what dependencies is missing. You
would have to install those first. I don’t know what OS you are using
but when I had this error in CentOS I had to install a few packages from
yum before I could run extconf.rb successfully. After this it will
generate a make file which is just like installing any other package
from source.
This error means you did not have the required dependencies to install
readline during installation of ruby. If you can find the location of
the ruby source files in your system, you can go to the ext/readline
folder. In there there should be an extconf.rb which you can run with
ruby extconf.rb
This will fail but it will tell you what dependencies is missing. You
would have to install those first. I don’t know what OS you are using
but when I had this error in CentOS I had to install a few packages from
yum before I could run extconf.rb successfully. After this it will
generate a make file which is just like installing any other package
from source.
Kenneth,
Thanks for the reply. I am using Ubuntu 10.04 and RVM to manage
different ruby installations.