Economy Size Geek

Ok so it turns out that the current version of Ubuntu (5.10 aka Breezy Badger) ships with Ruby 1.8.3. This is the only version that is NOT COMPATIBALE with Rails. (Debian stable has 1.8.2 so this isn’t a problem there) You have two options - you can try and find a way to get 1.8.2 on your box (Go back to Hoary) or you can go forward (Dapper). If you know me, you already know which direction I went.

The good news about this process is that the install is seriously simple. Truth be told, Ruby would probably be a fine canidate for a backport except for the fact that the package generates a lot of libraries - which they won’t backport.

So let’s get started:

become root

sudo su -

Add the following lines to my /etc/apt/sources.list

deb http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu dapper main restricted universe multiverse
deb-src http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu dapper main restricted universe multiverse


apt-get update

Now get the dependencies

apt-get build-dep ruby1.8 -tdapper

Now you need to get the source pacakage

apt-get source -b ruby1.8 -tdapper

Wait for it to finish

dpkg -i *.deb

That’s it - and so far it seems to work just fine!