# Snow Leopard advice for Ruby/Rails developers **URL:** \ **Category:** Ruby\ **Created:** [August 30, 2009, 2:23pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/snow-leopard-advice-for-ruby-rails-developers/174635 "2009-08-30T14:23:50Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![rykkers](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/r/e5b9ba/32.png) [@rykkers](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/rykkers)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2009, 2:23pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/snow-leopard-advice-for-ruby-rails-developers/174635/1 "2009-08-30T14:23:50Z")
Lots of ruby/rails developers are Mac users so I thought this might be of interest here. Here are some bumps I’ve had in the upgrade. 1. If you are using any macport installed software, get a list before you upgrade: 2. Backup any crucial mysql dbs before the upgrade. Luckily for me I didn’t have any CRUCIAL dbs. 3. Not exactly sure about this one, but I found that after the upgrade, I had rubygems 1.2.0!!! and it couldn’t be updated to the latest. Not sure exactly why, since I ended up installing ruby and gems from source, which is what I normally do since I prefer to have control over what version(s) I’m running and not be dependent on Apple. I do the same thing on my linux system. Forewarned is forearmed. – Rick DeNatale Blog: [http://talklikeaduck.denhaven2.com/](http://talklikeaduck.denhaven2.com/) Twitter: [http://twitter.com/RickDeNatale](http://twitter.com/RickDeNatale) WWR: [http://www.workingwithrails.com/person/9021-rick-denatale](http://www.workingwithrails.com/person/9021-rick-denatale) LinkedIn: [http://www.linkedin.com/in/rickdenatale](http://www.linkedin.com/in/rickdenatale) ---
**Author:** ![rykkers](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/r/e5b9ba/32.png) [@rykkers](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/rykkers)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2009, 4:17pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/snow-leopard-advice-for-ruby-rails-developers/174635/2 "2009-08-30T16:17:59Z")
I’m not sure if it’s still the case as I haven’t tried snow leopard yet but… I noticed with the transition from tiger to leopard that Apple replaced my /usr/local with a new empty directory. Thus everything that used /usr/local as its’ base directory (typically all FSF code) was eliminated from my system. So much for the notion of /usr/local being available for developer use. What I did was to create /opt/local as my new local space and install public software with that as the root. Of course, /opt/local resides on a second drive that is not turned on when installing OSX. Related to snow leopard, does XCode still come with the OSX distribution? ---
**Author:** ![rykkers](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/r/e5b9ba/32.png) [@rykkers](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/rykkers)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2009, 4:27pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/snow-leopard-advice-for-ruby-rails-developers/174635/3 "2009-08-30T16:27:21Z")
On Sun, Aug 30, 2009 at 10:16 AM, Rick[removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote: > Related to snow leopard, does XCode still come with the OSX > distribution? Yes, it’s on the disk. And easer to find than it was on the Leopard (or maybe it was Tiger) where the additional installs folder was scrolled off the finder view. – Rick DeNatale Blog: [http://talklikeaduck.denhaven2.com/](http://talklikeaduck.denhaven2.com/) Twitter: [http://twitter.com/RickDeNatale](http://twitter.com/RickDeNatale) WWR: [http://www.workingwithrails.com/person/9021-rick-denatale](http://www.workingwithrails.com/person/9021-rick-denatale) LinkedIn: [http://www.linkedin.com/in/rickdenatale](http://www.linkedin.com/in/rickdenatale) ---
**Author:** ![rykkers](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/r/e5b9ba/32.png) [@rykkers](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/rykkers)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2009, 5:42pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/snow-leopard-advice-for-ruby-rails-developers/174635/4 "2009-08-30T17:42:17Z")
All is broken on my computer after snow leopard. Sphinx doesn’t work, ImageMagick doesn’t, rmagick doesn’t, mysql plugin has failed and quite possibly more things. All besides rails work much better than before. Trausti ---
**Author:** ![rykkers](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/r/e5b9ba/32.png) [@rykkers](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/rykkers)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2009, 8:35pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/snow-leopard-advice-for-ruby-rails-developers/174635/5 "2009-08-30T20:35:33Z")
On Aug 30, 8:54 am, Rick [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote: > So I haven’t read too much about the snow leopard changes but is it > possible that the executable format (or dynamic link format) has > changed? Why would everything stop working? For the 64-bit installs of SL, yes. Not the executable format so much as the instruction format and addressing. This is the first major kernel upgrade … maybe since OSX came out. You’ll have to do some rebuilding. I took a scorched-earth approach and: - Noted which gems I have installed - Wiped out MacPorts completely - Rebuilt mysql - Rebuilt Ruby 1.8.7 (Rails 3 will need this as a minimum) - Rebuilt Ruby 1.9 - Reinstalled rubygems - Installed gems in priority order. I’m waiting for stuff to break before littering my system with unnecessary gems Note that because my Mac is a Macbook Pro, I don’t have any 64-bitness to worry about. ---
**Author:** ![rykkers](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/r/e5b9ba/32.png) [@rykkers](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/rykkers)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2009, 5:55pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/snow-leopard-advice-for-ruby-rails-developers/174635/6 "2009-08-30T17:55:45Z")
So I haven’t read too much about the snow leopard changes but is it possible that the executable format (or dynamic link format) has changed? Why would everything stop working? ---
**Author:** ![rykkers](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/r/e5b9ba/32.png) [@rykkers](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/rykkers)\ **Post date:** [September 1, 2009, 8:57am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/snow-leopard-advice-for-ruby-rails-developers/174635/7 "2009-09-01T08:57:36Z")
Thanks Rick for this warning… most important should do a clone backup on external hard disk before upgrade… good articles : > **[Dan Benjamin](https://danbenjamin.com)** > > Dan Benjamin's personal website. erwin