Installing Ruby and RubyGems on Centos 5

I got around to setting up Ruby on our new Centos 5 server today and ran into a snag. I ran:

yum install ruby

And went on to installing rubygems. However in installing rubygems I got an error that rdoc was not installed. Now I don’t remember ever having to install RDoc on my mac so I did a quick google search. Seems that RDoc is part of the standard ruby install but my package didnt have it. So I uninstalled my my rpm and went on about compiling from source. However when I went to install rubygems this time I got an error about zlib. After another quick google search I realized that I had not installed the other ruby packages. So I killed my compiled source for ruby and reinstalled from rpms this time running

yum install -y ruby
yum install -y ruby-devel ruby-docs ruby-ri ruby-irb ruby-rdoc

Then my rubygems package installed correctly and I am on my way.

19 Responses to “Installing Ruby and RubyGems on Centos 5”

nick says:
January 17, 2008 at 6:42 am

Thanks! This saved me a ton of time!
Simeon says:
January 17, 2008 at 8:16 am

Glad you found it helpful nick.
Greg says:
March 28, 2008 at 8:38 am

I’ve installed the ruby packages (including the extra ones you mentioned, thanks for that), but still get the following error when trying in install rubygems from the automated install script:
“./setup.rb: line 271: syntax error: unexpected end of file”
Suggestions?

Thanks!
G
Greg says:
March 28, 2008 at 8:46 am

ohhh – nevermind.
Found it in the rubygems docs;
it’s
>ruby ./setup.rb

duh.
Alex says:
August 7, 2008 at 1:20 pm

Extremely helpful, thanks a million. Worked like a charm.
James S says:
September 18, 2008 at 5:13 am

Thank you… As nick said, saved me a ton of time..
Vetal4eg says:
December 23, 2008 at 6:33 am

too old version (:
now i using ruby ee (rubyenterpriseedition.com)
maldito164 says:
April 1, 2009 at 1:30 pm

hi my problem is very dificultd i do not write the english much, good my problem is this: Excluding Packages in global exclude list

after keying the following thing:

yum install -y ruby
yum install -y ruby-devel ruby-docs ruby-ri ruby-irb ruby-rdoc

and that is my problem somebody can help me?
Stretchr says:
June 1, 2009 at 2:15 pm

Same here. Thanks very much!!
telan says:
June 6, 2009 at 1:21 pm

This the absolute best post I have found in over 15 years of searching for solutions on the Internet, Thanks a million Simeon!
mjq says:
August 5, 2009 at 7:58 am

very helpful . thanks
davi says:
February 10, 2010 at 4:24 am

Thank you a lot. I got the same issue here and your tip solved it.
fify says:
March 2, 2010 at 6:18 pm

Could I install a newer version of ruby? by yum or any other way?
ghanashyam says:
April 22, 2010 at 10:10 pm

Hey.. This is super cool.. I was looking for an installation of sup email client and it required ruby gems.. It made me qutie skeptical in the sense, there is always a problem of dependencies and compatibility when it comes to CentOS, On Ubuntu, sup installed right away…

On CentOs, I have to have rubygems and probably this is by far the post which gave me all the right things about installations and everything worked one shot.!!!

Marking it in my reader
Cheers!
shyam
dave says:
May 8, 2010 at 10:00 am

saved me a bunch of time. perfect post – thanks!
Ankit Sharma says:
September 19, 2010 at 9:40 pm

Thx a lot.
Shailendra says:
May 19, 2011 at 4:05 am

Thanks Alot !!
Fred says:
May 31, 2011 at 2:36 pm

WARNING! This was good post when it was written, but it’s now outdated. This will only install Ruby 1.8.5.

I found this post helpful for installing ruby 1.9+gems:
http://www.freshblurbs.com/install-ruby-1-9-centos
thanks says:
October 21, 2011 at 6:31 pm

Old shit