# Ruby Installation Mac Leopard **URL:** \ **Category:** Ruby\ **Created:** [December 24, 2008, 11:02am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ruby-installation-mac-leopard/156314 "2008-12-24T11:02:53Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 3\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![roa](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/r/8e7dd6/32.png) [@roa](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/roa)\ **Post date:** [December 24, 2008, 11:02am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ruby-installation-mac-leopard/156314/1 "2008-12-24T11:02:53Z")
Hi everybody I don’t know if I post this in the right forum but I would like to install a Ruby on Mac OSX Leopard. I know it comes stock with Leopard, but with the dificulties there has been with Rails 2.2 and MySQL on Leopard, it seems to be that the best way to go is just to get a new install of Ruby. The main problem is that MySQL is installed as 64bit and the stock Ruby interpreter as 32 bit. I have seen solutions that say installing 32bit of MySQL solves the problem, but I don’t want to downgrade. I have a 64bit machine, so god forbid me I want to use it the way it was intended. My concern however is that I don’t want to break the current stock installation because it hangs together with RubyCocoa and consorts. But I wan’t to be able to use my new Ruby installation in a fashionable way: using the ruby command by just typing “ruby”, etc. I was also wondering if I could use the stock RubyGems and others with the new Ruby installation. I have found: [http://danbenjamin.com/articles/2008/02/ruby-rails-leopard](http://danbenjamin.com/articles/2008/02/ruby-rails-leopard) instructions, but I still a bit unsure what to do. If just installing ruby would do the trick, or if I really need to reinstall RubyGems. This is my first month walking the Mac path and I don’t want to break stuff making my laptop completely useless and getting frustrated to fix it again. I know I could install MacPorts, but I hate having software installed twice on a system and I would like to keep everything as stock as possible. thank you in advance for the support and happy holidays to you all. ---
**Author:** ![roa](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/r/8e7dd6/32.png) [@roa](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/roa)\ **Post date:** [December 24, 2008, 11:27am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ruby-installation-mac-leopard/156314/2 "2008-12-24T11:27:19Z")
On Wed 24.Dec’08 at 18:54:07 +0900, Michael R. wrote: > intended. > instructions, but I still a bit unsure what to do. If just installing > ruby would do the trick, or if I really need to reinstall RubyGems. This > is my first month walking the Mac path and I don’t want to break stuff > making my laptop completely useless and getting frustrated to fix it > again. > > I know I could install MacPorts, but I hate having software installed > twice on a system and I would like to keep everything as stock as > possible. Hi Michael, I would recommend you to install those bits in your home directory. The process would look something like: 1. Download ruby sources or checkout the svn repository. Compile and install in $HOME/local. 2. Change your $PATH to ensure your shell finds the ruby you just installed. 3. Install rubygems 4. Install whatever gems you want… 5. Install mysql in your $HOME/local. That’s a little bit trickier but there are many howtos/tutorials out there. This is pretty good: [http://www.washington.edu/computing/web/publishing/mysql-install.html](http://www.washington.edu/computing/web/publishing/mysql-install.html) You are now good to go. If you want to run any ruby code with the preinstalled version of ruby just use the full fs path (/usr/bin/ruby …). -drd ---
**Author:** ![roa](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/r/8e7dd6/32.png) [@roa](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/roa)\ **Post date:** [December 25, 2008, 2:13pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ruby-installation-mac-leopard/156314/3 "2008-12-25T14:13:50Z")
Thanks for the info, but I found another solution. I just recompiled the stock MySQL as a Universal build. All other blog posts mentioned running 2 mysql instances, but why no recompiling the stock one as a universal build is still a question for me. Now I have i386 and x86\_64 support 🙂 and everything seems to work.