# "undefined symbol" with wxRuby gem on Fedora Core 5

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/undefined-symbol-with-wxruby-gem-on-fedora-core-5/127178>\
**Category:** wxRuby\
**Created:** [January 25, 2008, 9:02pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/undefined-symbol-with-wxruby-gem-on-fedora-core-5/127178 "2008-01-25T21:02:05Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Jay\_McGavren](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/e79b87/32.png) [@Jay\_McGavren](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Jay_McGavren)\
**Post date:** [January 25, 2008, 9:02pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/undefined-symbol-with-wxruby-gem-on-fedora-core-5/127178/1 "2008-01-25T21:02:05Z")

</div>

I’m trying to test on platforms other than Windows, starting with my  
Fedora Core 5 box. I’m getting this error when trying to run the  
Hello World script  
([http://wxruby.rubyforge.org/wiki/wiki.pl?Hello\_World](http://wxruby.rubyforge.org/wiki/wiki.pl?Hello_World)):

```
undefined symbol: gtk_widget_is_composited -
/usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/wxruby-1.9.4-x86-
linux/lib/wxruby2.so (LoadError)

```

This happens with both the wxRuby 1.9.4 and 1.9.2 gems. I’m not  
really looking to build from source; I want the gem to auto-download  
and “just work” for users of my full application. Hopefully I’m just  
missing something that can be downloaded via a package manager, which  
I can include in installation instructions. Can anyone advise?

-Jay McGavren  
[http://jay.mcgavren.com/zyps](http://jay.mcgavren.com/zyps)

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Jay\_McGavren](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/e79b87/32.png) [@Jay\_McGavren](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Jay_McGavren)\
**Post date:** [January 25, 2008, 11:18pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/undefined-symbol-with-wxruby-gem-on-fedora-core-5/127178/2 "2008-01-25T23:18:12Z")

</div>

Hi Jay

Jay McGavren wrote:

> I’m trying to test on platforms other than Windows, starting with my  
> Fedora Core 5 box. I’m getting this error when trying to run the  
> Hello World script  
> ([http://wxruby.rubyforge.org/wiki/wiki.pl?Hello\_World](http://wxruby.rubyforge.org/wiki/wiki.pl?Hello_World)):
> 
> ```
> undefined symbol: gtk_widget_is_composited -
> /usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/wxruby-1.9.4-x86-
> linux/lib/wxruby2.so (LoadError)
> 
> ```

Thanks for the report.

I’m pretty sure this will be because the version of GTK on the (Ubuntu  
7.10) machine that I build wxWidgets and the wxRuby gem on is newer than  
that on the machine you’re trying to install on. It looks like that  
method is referenced in one place in the wxWidgets source and  
conditionally compiled for version 2.10 of GTK.

Could you see what version of GTK2 is provided with your distro please?

> This happens with both the wxRuby 1.9.4 and 1.9.2 gems. I’m not  
> really looking to build from source; I want the gem to auto-download  
> and “just work” for users of my full application. Hopefully I’m just  
> missing something that can be downloaded via a package manager, which  
> I can include in installation instructions. Can anyone advise?

First step would be to see if there is an upgrade to the latest GTK2.10  
available from your repo. That would verify that’s the issue.

More generally, for the binary gems we aim for the commonest platforms -  
hence Windows XP, Ubuntu, and OS X 10.4. But if we can make the gems  
more compatible with little compromise on features, we will, as Sean did  
to make the 1.9.4 release work on OS X 10.4 as well as 10.5.

I’ll seek some advice on whether I can compile wxWidgets in a more  
backwards-compatible way re GTK, although some of the stuff that’s being  
used to do conditional compilation is actually direct from GTK.

cheers  
alex