ruby-build is a command-line tool that simplifies installation of any Ruby version from source on Unix-like systems.
It is available as a plugin for rbenv as the rbenv install
command, or as a standalone program as the ruby-build
command.
brew install ruby-build
Upgrade with:
brew upgrade ruby-build
git clone https://github.com/rbenv/ruby-build.git "$(rbenv root)"/plugins/ruby-build
Upgrade with:
git -C "$(rbenv root)"/plugins/ruby-build pull
First, download a tarball from https://github.com/rbenv/ruby-build/releases/latest. Then:
tar -xzf ruby-build-*.tar.gz
PREFIX=/usr/local ./ruby-build-*/install.sh
# As a standalone program
$ ruby-build --list # lists available versions of Ruby
$ ruby-build 3.2.2 /opt/rubies/ruby-3.2.2 # installs Ruby 3.2.2
$ ruby-build -d ruby-3.2.2 /opt/rubies # alternate form for the previous example
# As an rbenv plugin
$ rbenv install 3.2.2 # installs Ruby 3.2.2 to ~/.rbenv/versions/3.2.2
Warning
ruby-build mostly does not verify that system dependencies are present before downloading and attempting to compile Ruby from source. Please ensure that all requisite libraries such as build tools and development headers are already present on your system.
Basically, what ruby-build does when installing a Ruby version is this:
- Downloads an official tarball of Ruby source code;
- Extracts the archive into a temporary directory on your system;
- Executes
./configure --prefix=/path/to/destination
in the source code; - Runs
make install
to compile Ruby; - Verifies that the installed Ruby is functional.
Depending on the context, ruby-build does a little bit more than the above: for example, it will try to link Ruby to the appropriate OpenSSL version, even if that means downloading and compiling OpenSSL itself; it will discover and link to Homebrew-installed instances of some libraries like libyaml and readline, etc.
To install a version of Ruby that is not recognized by ruby-build, you can specify the path to a custom build definition file in place of a Ruby version number.
Check out default build definitions as examples on how to write definition files.
The build process may be configured through the following environment variables:
Variable | Function |
---|---|
TMPDIR |
Where temporary files are stored. |
RUBY_BUILD_BUILD_PATH |
Where sources are downloaded and built. (Default: a timestamped subdirectory of TMPDIR ) |
RUBY_BUILD_CACHE_PATH |
Where to cache downloaded package files. (Default: ~/.rbenv/cache if invoked as rbenv plugin) |
RUBY_BUILD_HTTP_CLIENT |
One of aria2c , curl , or wget to use for downloading. (Default: first one found in PATH) |
RUBY_BUILD_ARIA2_OPTS |
Additional options to pass to aria2c for downloading. |
RUBY_BUILD_CURL_OPTS |
Additional options to pass to curl for downloading. |
RUBY_BUILD_WGET_OPTS |
Additional options to pass to wget for downloading. |
RUBY_BUILD_MIRROR_URL |
Custom mirror URL root. |
RUBY_BUILD_MIRROR_PACKAGE_URL |
Custom complete mirror URL (e.g. http://mirror.example.com/package-1.0.0.tar.gz). |
RUBY_BUILD_SKIP_MIRROR |
Bypass the download mirror and fetch all package files from their original URLs. |
RUBY_BUILD_TARBALL_OVERRIDE |
Override the URL to fetch the ruby tarball from, optionally followed by #checksum . |
RUBY_BUILD_DEFINITIONS |
Colon-separated list of paths to search for build definition files. |
RUBY_BUILD_ROOT |
The path prefix to search for build definitions files. Deprecated: use RUBY_BUILD_DEFINITIONS |
CC |
Path to the C compiler. |
RUBY_CFLAGS |
Additional CFLAGS options (e.g., to override -O3 ). |
CONFIGURE_OPTS |
Additional ./configure options. |
MAKE |
Custom make command (e.g., gmake ). |
MAKE_OPTS / MAKEOPTS |
Additional make options. |
MAKE_INSTALL_OPTS |
Additional make install options. |
RUBY_CONFIGURE_OPTS |
Additional ./configure options (applies only to Ruby source). |
RUBY_MAKE_OPTS |
Additional make options (applies only to Ruby source). |
RUBY_MAKE_INSTALL_OPTS |
Additional make install options (applies only to Ruby source). |
NO_COLOR |
Disable ANSI colors in output. The default is to use colors for output connected to a terminal. |
CLICOLOR_FORCE |
Use ANSI colors in output even when not connected to a terminal. |
Both rbenv install
and ruby-build
commands support the -p/--patch
flag to apply a patch to the Ruby source code before building. Patches are read from standard input:
# applying a single patch
$ rbenv install --patch 1.9.3-p429 < /path/to/ruby.patch
# applying a patch from HTTP
$ rbenv install --patch 1.9.3-p429 < <(curl -sSL http://git.io/ruby.patch)
# applying multiple patches
$ cat fix1.patch fix2.patch | rbenv install --patch 1.9.3-p429
All Ruby definition files bundled with ruby-build include checksums for packages, meaning that all externally downloaded packages are automatically checked for integrity after fetching.
See the next section for more information on how to author checksums.
To speed up downloads, ruby-build fetches package files from a mirror hosted on Amazon CloudFront. To benefit from this, the packages must specify their checksum:
# example:
install_package "ruby-2.6.5" "https://ruby-lang.org/ruby-2.6.5.tgz#<SHA2>"
ruby-build will first try to fetch this package from $RUBY_BUILD_MIRROR_URL/<SHA2>
(note: this is the complete URL), where <SHA2>
is the checksum for the file. It
will fall back to downloading the package from the original location if:
- the package was not found on the mirror;
- the mirror is down;
- the download is corrupt, i.e. the file's checksum doesn't match;
- no tool is available to calculate the checksum; or
RUBY_BUILD_SKIP_MIRROR
is enabled.
You may specify a custom mirror by setting RUBY_BUILD_MIRROR_URL
.
If a mirror site doesn't conform to the above URL format, you can specify the
complete URL by setting RUBY_BUILD_MIRROR_PACKAGE_URL
. It behaves the same as
RUBY_BUILD_MIRROR_URL
except being a complete URL.
The default ruby-build download mirror is sponsored by Basecamp.
Both ruby-build
and rbenv install
accept the -k
or --keep
flag, which
tells ruby-build to keep the downloaded source after installation. This can be
useful if you need to use gdb
and memprof
with Ruby.
Source code will be kept in a parallel directory tree ~/.rbenv/sources
when
using --keep
with the rbenv install
command. You should specify the
location of the source code with the RUBY_BUILD_BUILD_PATH
environment
variable when using --keep
with ruby-build
.
Please see the ruby-build wiki for solutions to common problems.
If you can't find an answer on the wiki, open an issue on the issue tracker. Be sure to include the full build log for build failures.