Caged Leopard — Should developers use Leopard’s Ruby?

<p>Last weekend brought what many were waiting for a long time, Leopard.  With Leopard, many developers were waiting on a system installed ruby binary that was current enough do work with current libraries and gems.  I quickly learned we received a mixed blessing.  On one hand, the bundled ruby with its <a href="http://www.apple.com/macosx/technology/unix.html">Dtrace</a> integration, <a href="http://rubycocoa.sourceforge.net/HomePage">RubyCocoa</a> goodness is a nice addition.  But, on the other hand, it maybe slightly more than difficult to get all your favorite gems and libraries installed.  This is especially important if you are dealing with gems which have C extensions such as Ruby2Ruby and mysql.</p>


<p><strong>As a personal note, I made the conscious decision to use <a href="http://www.macports.org">MacPorts</a> from the start</strong> because of nice safety net it provides; if you screw up MacPorts beyond recognition, you can always delete <em>/opt/local</em> and start over again.</p>


<p>Installing MacPorts is as simple as downloading the <a href="http://svn.macports.org/repository/macports/downloads/MacPorts-1.5.0/MacPorts-1.5.0-10.5.dmg"><span class="caps">DMG</span></a> and running the package installer.  After that, you can launch your favorite terminal, and <em>sudo port install</em> ruby, mysql, and ImageMagick (if you happen to use RMagick).  You may have read reports that there were issues compiling <a href="http://trac.macports.org/projects/macports/ticket/12997">libtiff</a> which blocked ImageMagick, but that issue was solved quickly two days after Leopard was released.  <a href="http://www.google.com/search?q=macports+ruby+leopard">Searching google</a> will net you even more detailed guides.</p>


<p>The short of this, is that MacPorts provides everything you need if you aren&#8217;t developing RubyCocoa applications.  If you are developing with RubyCocoa in mind, the ruby located at <em>/usr/bin/ruby</em> is the one you want to use, but you might have some issues with certain gems.  I have no doubt that community will work these out fairly quickly.</p>