How to use gem to install Rails on Ubuntu

Question

The error message:

Building native extensions.  This could take a while...
ERROR:  Error installing rails:
  ERROR: Failed to build gem native extension.

    /usr/bin/ruby2.1 -r ./siteconf20150328-1540-hff2f0.rb extconf.rb
checking if the C compiler accepts ... *** extconf.rb failed ***
Could not create Makefile due to some reason, probably lack of necessary
libraries and/or headers.  Check the mkmf.log file for more details.  You may
need configuration options.

Provided configuration options:
  --with-opt-dir
  --without-opt-dir
  --with-opt-include
  --without-opt-include=${opt-dir}/include
  --with-opt-lib
  --without-opt-lib=${opt-dir}/lib
  --with-make-prog
  --without-make-prog
  --srcdir=.
  --curdir
  --ruby=/usr/bin/ruby2.1
  --help
  --clean
/usr/lib/ruby/2.1.0/mkmf.rb:456:in `try_do': The compiler failed to generate an executable file. (RuntimeError)
You have to install development tools first.
  from /usr/lib/ruby/2.1.0/mkmf.rb:571:in `block in try_compile'
  from /usr/lib/ruby/2.1.0/mkmf.rb:522:in `with_werror'
  from /usr/lib/ruby/2.1.0/mkmf.rb:571:in `try_compile'
  from extconf.rb:80:in `nokogiri_try_compile'
  from extconf.rb:87:in `block in add_cflags'
  from /usr/lib/ruby/2.1.0/mkmf.rb:621:in `with_cflags'
  from extconf.rb:86:in `add_cflags'
  from extconf.rb:337:in `<main>'

extconf failed, exit code 1

Gem files will remain installed in /var/lib/gems/2.1.0/gems/nokogiri-1.6.6.2 for inspection.
Results logged to /var/lib/gems/2.1.0/extensions/x86_64-linux/2.1.0/nokogiri-1.6.6.2/gem_make.out

Configurations:

1. Ubuntu 14.10 (GNU/Linux 3.16.0-23-generic x86_64)
2. gcc (Ubuntu 4.9.1-16ubuntu6) 4.9.1
3. ruby 2.1.2p95 (2014-05-08) [x86_64-linux-gnu]

Answer 1

You seem to be missing some Ruby requirement. If you are using RVM, try:

rvm requirements

to get the list of dependencies and install them manually.

Otherwise, install the known basic requirements directly using:

sudo apt-get install build-essential bison openssl libreadline6 libreadline6-dev curl git-core zlib1g zlib1g-dev libssl-dev libyaml-dev libxml2-dev autoconf libc6-dev ncurses-dev automake libtool

Answer 2

After upgrading to Rails 4.2.4 on Ubuntu 14.04 using RVM I needed to do this:

sudo apt-get install libgmp-dev

or

sudo apt-get install libgmp3-dev

Full stacktrace: http://ruby-on-rails-eq8.blogspot.co.uk/2015/10/solving-ubuntu-1404-ruby-c-dependancy.html

Answer 3

For Centos 7, Redhat 7 :

yum -y install gcc ruby-dev

Answer 4

You get this error because the development dependencies for Ruby are missing.

I suggest that you install and use RVM to solve this, check the official and updated instructions here https://rvm.io/rvm/install

At the time when I answer this question I followed these steps:

gpg --keyserver hkp://keys.gnupg.net --recv-keys
409B6B1796C275462A1703113804BB82D39DC0E3

\curl -sSL https://get.rvm.io | bash

If you get this warning

  * WARNING: You have '~/.profile' file, you might want to load it,
    to do that add the following line to '/home/mao/.bash_profile':

  source ~/.profile

execute this command:

echo source ~/.profile >> ~/.bash_profile

Then, reload/apply the bash_profile that you just updated by executing this:

source ~/.bash_profile

Finally run this to install the requirements:

rvm requirements

This should work for any Linux distribution like Ubuntu, Fedora, Debian, Redhat, Slackware.