Tom Mac wrote:
> Hi
>    I have installed ruby from fedora repository (fedora12) with
> 
> yum install ruby ruby-devel ruby-docs ruby-irb ruby-libs ruby-mode
> ruby-rdoc ruby-ri
> 
>    And I got ruby --version
> ruby 1.8.6 (2009-08-04 patchlevel 383) [i386-linux]
> 
>      This I did 2 months back . Now I am asked to repeat this process on
> another machine. So my question is where can I find the same above
> version with same patch . I looked in
> www.ruby-lang.org   It says about 1.8.7 and 1.9.1

ftp.ruby-lang.org has all the previous version releases.

>      My second question is if I install 1.8.7 from source on the next
> machine, will the application work?

Probably. There are a number of changes in the ruby language for 1.8.7, 
such that a program written for 1.8.7 may well not work in 1.8.6, but 
one written for 1.8.6 probably works in 1.8.7.

> So what is the preferred way
> Installing ruby from source or from a repository like fedora in my case?

If your distribution has a decent ruby repo, usually it's a good idea to 
use that. Your distribution should be keeping track of things like 
security updates and you will automatically get a fixed version if you 
need it. It also saves hassles in compilation (e.g. if you don't have 
the openssl-dev or zlib-dev packages installed when building yourself, 
then important ruby extensions won't be built)

HTH,

Brian.
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