Hi Richard, Thanks for your help on this very strange bug. The bug you linked to looks unrelated - in fact I am not getting any console output at all (I usually get lots of debug stuff... see below) I know I've gotten confused about what my system looks like, so I can only imagine how confusing it must be to you. :) Here's the current state for the rest of this email: no debian smoke or qtruby packages (i.e. no libqt0-ruby1.8 and no libsmoke*) are installed. I have run make uninstall in qtruby's source tree too, so I should have no qtruby on my system, and sure enough "require 'Qt'" fails with "no such file to load -- Qt". rm -r qtruby-1.0.10 tar xzf qtruby-1.0.10.tgz cd qtruby-1.0.10 ../configure --with-smoke="qt" make The above results in an error: /bin/sh ../../libtool --silent --tag=CXX --mode=link g++ -Wno-long-long -Wundef -ansi -D_XOPEN_SOURCE=500 -D_BSD_SOURCE -Wcast-align -Wconversion -Wchar-subscripts -Wall -W -Wpointer-arith -O2 -Wformat-security -Wmissing-format-attribute -Wno-non-virtual-dtor -fno-exceptions -fno-check-new -fno-common -o libsmokeqt.la -rpath /usr/local/lib -version-info 3:4:92 -no-undefined -Wl,--no-undefined -Wl,--allow-shlib-undefined -L/usr/share/qt3/lib -L/usr/X11R6/lib smokedata.lo x_1.lo x_2.lo x_3.lo x_4.lo x_5.lo x_6.lo x_7.lo x_8.lo x_9.lo x_10.lo x_11.lo x_12.lo x_13.lo x_14.lo x_15.lo x_16.lo x_17.lo x_18.lo x_19.lo x_20.lo -lqt-mt -lz -lpng -lz -lm -lXext -lX11 -lSM -lICE -lpthread -lGLU -lGL -lX11 libtool: link: AGE `92' is greater than the current interface number `3' libtool: link: `3:4:92' is not valid version information make[3]: *** [libsmokeqt.la] Error 1 make[3]: Leaving directory `/tmp/qtruby-1.0.10/smoke/qt' make[2]: *** [all-recursive] Error 1 make[2]: Leaving directory `/tmp/qtruby-1.0.10/smoke' make[1]: *** [all-recursive] Error 1 make[1]: Leaving directory `/tmp/qtruby-1.0.10' make: *** [all] Error 2 I tried running "make -f Makefile.cvs" too, same result. So 1.0.10 is out for now since I don't want to fiddle with libtool. ;-) So I do this: cd ..; rm -r qtruby-1.0.9; tar xzf qtruby-1.0.9.tgz make -f Makefile.cvs # (there is no configure in this tarball) ../configure --with-smoke="qt" make sudo make install This time I noticed this at the end of make install: /usr/bin/ld: warning: libstdc++.so.5, needed by /usr/lib/libqt-mt.so, may conflict with libstdc++.so.6 Here's the ldd output $ ldd /usr/local/lib/site_ruby/1.8/i386-linux/qtruby.so linux-gate.so.1 => (0xffffe000) libm.so.6 => /lib/tls/libm.so.6 (0xb7f73000) libsmokeqt.so.1 => /usr/local/lib/libsmokeqt.so.1 (0xb7b1d000) libqt-mt.so.3 => /usr/lib/libqt-mt.so.3 (0xb7431000) libpng12.so.0 => /usr/lib/libpng12.so.0 (0xb740c000) libz.so.1 => /usr/lib/libz.so.1 (0xb73f8000) libXext.so.6 => /usr/X11R6/lib/libXext.so.6 (0xb73e9000) libSM.so.6 => /usr/X11R6/lib/libSM.so.6 (0xb73e0000) libICE.so.6 => /usr/X11R6/lib/libICE.so.6 (0xb73c9000) libpthread.so.0 => /lib/tls/libpthread.so.0 (0xb73b7000) libGLU.so.1 => /usr/X11R6/lib/libGLU.so.1 (0xb7339000) libGL.so.1 => /usr/X11R6/lib/libGL.so.1 (0xb72d5000) libX11.so.6 => /usr/X11R6/lib/libX11.so.6 (0xb7209000) libc.so.6 => /lib/tls/libc.so.6 (0xb70d1000) /lib/ld-linux.so.2 (0x80000000) libstdc++.so.6 => /usr/lib/libstdc++.so.6 (0xb6ff6000) libgcc_s.so.1 => /lib/libgcc_s.so.1 (0xb6feb000) libfontconfig.so.1 => /usr/lib/libfontconfig.so.1 (0xb6fbc000) libaudio.so.2 => /usr/lib/libaudio.so.2 (0xb6fa6000) libXt.so.6 => /usr/X11R6/lib/libXt.so.6 (0xb6f57000) libXrender.so.1 => /usr/lib/libXrender.so.1 (0xb6f4f000) libXrandr.so.2 => /usr/X11R6/lib/libXrandr.so.2 (0xb6f4b000) libXcursor.so.1 => /usr/lib/libXcursor.so.1 (0xb6f42000) libXft.so.2 => /usr/lib/libXft.so.2 (0xb6f2f000) libfreetype.so.6 => /usr/lib/libfreetype.so.6 (0xb6ec2000) libdl.so.2 => /lib/tls/libdl.so.2 (0xb6ebd000) libstdc++.so.5 => /usr/lib/libstdc++.so.5 (0xb6e03000) libXxf86vm.so.1 => /usr/X11R6/lib/libXxf86vm.so.1 (0xb6dfe000) libexpat.so.1 => /usr/lib/libexpat.so.1 (0xb6dde000) That warning gave me the idea to look at 'ldd /usr/lib/libqt-mt.so.3': ldd /usr/lib/libqt-mt.so.3 linux-gate.so.1 => (0xffffe000) libfontconfig.so.1 => /usr/lib/libfontconfig.so.1 (0xb784c000) libaudio.so.2 => /usr/lib/libaudio.so.2 (0xb7837000) libXt.so.6 => /usr/X11R6/lib/libXt.so.6 (0xb77e8000) libpng12.so.0 => /usr/lib/libpng12.so.0 (0xb77c3000) libz.so.1 => /usr/lib/libz.so.1 (0xb77af000) libXrender.so.1 => /usr/lib/libXrender.so.1 (0xb77a6000) libXrandr.so.2 => /usr/X11R6/lib/libXrandr.so.2 (0xb77a2000) libXcursor.so.1 => /usr/lib/libXcursor.so.1 (0xb7799000) libXft.so.2 => /usr/lib/libXft.so.2 (0xb7786000) libfreetype.so.6 => /usr/lib/libfreetype.so.6 (0xb7719000) libXext.so.6 => /usr/X11R6/lib/libXext.so.6 (0xb770b000) libX11.so.6 => /usr/X11R6/lib/libX11.so.6 (0xb763f000) libSM.so.6 => /usr/X11R6/lib/libSM.so.6 (0xb7636000) libICE.so.6 => /usr/X11R6/lib/libICE.so.6 (0xb761f000) libdl.so.2 => /lib/tls/libdl.so.2 (0xb761b000) libpthread.so.0 => /lib/tls/libpthread.so.0 (0xb7609000) libstdc++.so.5 => /usr/lib/libstdc++.so.5 (0xb754f000) libm.so.6 => /lib/tls/libm.so.6 (0xb7528000) libgcc_s.so.1 => /lib/libgcc_s.so.1 (0xb751d000) libc.so.6 => /lib/tls/libc.so.6 (0xb73e5000) libexpat.so.1 => /usr/lib/libexpat.so.1 (0xb73c5000) /lib/ld-linux.so.2 (0x80000000) Sorry for the copious output. Now, in qtruby/rubylib/tutorial/ I can run t1, t2, and t3 just fine, but t4 gives me an empty gray box. I stuck a puts 'foo' just after the call to super in t4.rb (line 10), and it seems that it never gets printed. So it looks like the call to Qt::Widget::initialize via super is not returning. If I put 'puts "foo"' before the super call, it does happen.