I went with darwinports and things worked fairly smoothly. It
downloads and installs the readline library automatically -- which if
you download the sources and attempt a manual install you might omit.

I had a little glitch because I had installed darwinports months ago
and then did an incomplete uninstall. Note, that darwinports installs
files in
 /Library/Tcl/darwinports1.0
 /etc/ports
 /opt/local
by default. I had previously only deleted my /opt/local dir which
caused a hiccup after installing the latest version in a new location.

thanks again!
Steven Marcus



On Thu, 4 Nov 2004 08:13:31 +0900, Van Dyk, Joe <joe.vandyk / boeing.com> wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Robert [mailto:sigzero / gmail.com]
> > Sent: Wednesday, November 03, 2004 6:34 AM
> > To: ruby-talk ML
> > Subject: Re: installing ruby on MacOS X
> >
> >
> > Steven Marcus <steven.marcus / gmail.com> wrote in message
> > news:<281148e704110203477ed14630 / mail.gmail.com>...
> > > Hi all!
> > >
> > > Ruby newbie here.
> > >
> > > I'd like to install and work with Ruby 1.8.x on MacOS X.
> > > I have found
> > >  http://www.rubygarden.org/ruby?RubyOnMacintosh
> > > and
> > >  http://www.loudthinking.com/arc/000199.html
> > > to be helpful.
> > >
> > > It appears that my options are
> > > 1) download the source and compile it myself
> > > 2) download a binary and install it
> > > 3) install via darwinports
> > > 4) install via fink
> > >
> > > After installation I believe I can add ruby libraries
> > > 1) manually
> > > 2) as Ruby Gems
> > > 3) from the RAA
> > > 4) via darwinports if using 3 above
> > > 5) via fink if using 4 above
> > >
> > > I imagine there are a number of trade offs to the above approaches.
> > > Also, there appears to be overlap between
> > (darwinports|fink) and gems
> > > and RAA. As I write this darwinports appears to have a more active
> > > ruby community, judging from the fact that it offers 58
> > ports versus
> > > 16 for fink.
> >
> > >
> > > I'd like things to be painless and relatively automatic. By
> > automatic,
> > > I mean that installing and especially upgrading libraries should be
> > > quick and painless.
> > >
> > > Can someone share their experience?
> > >
> > > TIA
> > > Steven Marcus
> >
> 
> I installed the latest stable release (1.8.2) a couple days ago on my
> mac.  I had previously installed it via darwinports, but that installed
> version 1.8.1, and I wanted the most recent one.
> 
> So I downloaded the source code, typed './configure; make; sudo make
> install' to install ruby, then downloaded rubygems, then went from
> there.  Not terribly complicated.
> 
>