# Rdoc and ri under MacOSX - how to?

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/rdoc-and-ri-under-macosx-how-to/106632>\
**Category:** Ruby\
**Created:** [June 12, 2007, 4:50pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/rdoc-and-ri-under-macosx-how-to/106632 "2007-06-12T16:50:07Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![medips](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/278dde/32.png) [@medips](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/medips)\
**Post date:** [June 12, 2007, 4:50pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/rdoc-and-ri-under-macosx-how-to/106632/1 "2007-06-12T16:50:07Z")

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I’m a Ruby newbie under MacOSX 10.4.9. Ruby is working very well but  
and I cannot find how and where to install the documentation in order  
that rdoc and ri work. Yet from the Terminal I got the messages below.

Any clue? Thanks a lot.  
B

* * *

* * *

## $ rdoc “String” File not found: String

* * *

$ ri String  
No ri documentation found in:

Was rdoc run to create documentation?

## Installing Documentation

‘ri’ uses a database of documentation built by the RDoc utility.

So, how do you install this documentation on your system? It depends on  
how you installed Ruby.

_If you installed Ruby from source files_ (that is, if it some point you  
typed ‘make’ during the process :), you can install the RDoc  
documentation yourself. Just go back to the place where you have your  
Ruby source and type

```
make install-doc

```

You’ll probably need to do this as a superuser, as the documentation is  
installed in the Ruby target tree (normally somewhere under  
+/usr/local+.

## _If you installed Ruby from a binary distribution_ (perhaps using a one-click installer, or using some other packaging system), then the team that produced the package probably forgot to package the documentation as well. Contact them, and see if they can add it to the next release.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![medips](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/278dde/32.png) [@medips](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/medips)\
**Post date:** [June 12, 2007, 7:57pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/rdoc-and-ri-under-macosx-how-to/106632/2 "2007-06-12T19:57:39Z")

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On Jun 12, 2007, at 07:48 , medips wrote:

> ## Alouette:/usr/local/lib/ruby $ ls 1.8 gems site\_ruby
> 
> * * *

That is the location of the install, not the source tree you  
installed from. From the location I can guess that you built this one  
yourself and installed it. If you don’t still have the tarball or svn  
checkout sitting around, get it again, unpack it if necessary, cd  
into it, and run ‘sudo make install-doc’