[Rubycocoa-talk] New ways to not install Ruby things.

[Dave h. <eb...@Gr...>]

Well, the Rails installation has finally failed completely. I reached 
the point where Rails would get invoked when the right page was called, 
and I could even get results back, usually, *if* I did not attempt to 
communicate with my database. I couldn't get it to generate a useful 
error message, so I shelved that for a couple days.

Then my entire 'server data partition' (where websites, mail, and 
database files live) was obliterated when my RAID array botched a 
rebuild of a faulty drive on the one day in the past three months when 
I didn't have a backup of the whole thing.

So it's something of a moot point. I am now shopping for a used XServe.

I moved back to my other project, the RubyCocoa task list manager. 
That's been blowing up with bus errors for no obvious reason. Since 
it's clearly a fault in RubyCocoa, Ruby, or OSX, instead of programmer 
error, I've been a bit stymied. Since I now know that my 1.8.2 is the 
November version, I decided to install the December one.

Well, from the command line, I get the new 1.8.2 (darwin7.9.0). But 
XCode can't let go of the older, powerpc-darwin7.5.0 version, and 
continues to fail with a bus error semi-randomly. I have no idea how to 
get it to get a clue; repeated fiddling on my part just upsets it when 
it can't find the older libraries or whatever it's looking for.

I decided to scrap everything and reinstall Ruby from scratch.

In order to be able to tell the difference between the older 1.8.2 and 
the newer 1.8.2, I named the newer version "ruby-1.8.2(12/25/04)".  How 
delightful to discover that "make install" can't handle parentheses. 
Configure didn't bat an eye. Make didn't have a problem. But Make 
Install instantly fails. And if I change the directory name, it still 
fails, since it turns out that ./configure hard-coded its own directory 
into the files it built. So I have to start over from the very 
beginning.

Then I can try installing gems. Then RubyCocoa. Then Rails.

[pause]

Or not. Make has failed.

	compiling iconv
	gcc -fno-common -g -O2 -pipe -fno-common  -I. -I../.. -I../../. 
-I../.././ext/iconv 	-DICONV_INPTR_CAST="(char **)"  -c iconv.c
	iconv.c:1: bad macro argument list
	iconv.c:231: illegal function call, found `inptr'
	cpp-precomp: warning: errors during smart preprocessing, retrying in 
basic mode
	<built-in>:1:1: no macro name given in #define directive
	make[1]: *** [iconv.o] Error 1
	make: *** [all] Error 1

Let's try again....nope, my installation directory is now mysteriously 
corrupted. I must now erase it and download a whole new copy of Ruby.  
I guess I'll try the package that 'discordantus' put together. After I 
finish banging my head against the wall.