Helpful Configure Options For Development

Recently I decided to install Ruby 1.9. I’ve been compiling programs from source more and more often and I am getting used to the normal workflow: configure, make, make install. But Ruby 1.9 was different. I wanted to easily reference both the Ruby 1.8 and Ruby 1.9 so I could easily work with both. I came across a neat switch that I had never cared to use before but made perfect sense for my situation:

shell> ./configure --program-suffix=WHATEVER ...

That neat switch will make it so when you finally `make install` the output binaries are named rubyWHATEVER, irbWHATEVER, etc. Obviously you should choose something better then WHATEVER. I went with ‘–program-suffix=19′ so that all my Ruby 1.9 binaries are exactly the same as the 1.8 binaries but with “19″ on the end. Such as ruby19, irb19, etc. This will really save me some time as I experiment with Ruby 1.9.

Note when installing Ruby from source on Mac OS X you may run into problems, check out this article or the one linked above for the fixes.

Also, since I had now had a ruby19 I figured I’d make a ruby18 as well. I already have my own ‘~/bin’ directory in my shell’s path. So I added the following symbolic link which makes `ruby18` reference my default Ruby 1.8 interpreter:

shell> ln -s `which ruby` ruby18

The `which ruby` in my case evaluates to the default installation of Ruby. It may not be the case on your computer. That depends on how you’ve modified your path. So the explicit version that should work on any mac is:

shell> ln -s /usr/bin/ruby ruby18

Here the symbol link means I can use `ruby18` if I want to be dead sure I’m using Ruby 1.8, and likewise `ruby19` when I want to use Ruby 1.9. I know I’m not the first person to do this, but I’m happy and I want to spread the joy.

Other notable configure options are:

shell> ./configure --prefix=PREFIX ...

This makes it so when you run `make install` it will install the files to PREFIX/(here). An example would typically be ‘–prefix=/usr/local’ to install the files into the /usr/local dir. However, that is normally the default installation directory and therefore most people don’t bother changing it. I’ve used this prefix to install temporary things directly into my home directory. This made it easy to find, work with, and delete when I was done.