Install Mongrel & Hpricot Under Ubuntu

Matt Henry — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 12:09:23 +0000

Whenever I do a fresh install of Ubuntu, and I’m setting up Ruby, Rails, I always run into the same problem with a handful of gems (such as Mongrel & Hpricot). This is how things usually go down:

matt@thinkpad:~$ sudo gem install hpricot
Building native extensions.  This could take a while...
ERROR:  Error installing hpricot:
ERROR: Failed to build gem native extension.
/usr/bin/ruby1.8 extconf.rb install hpricot
extconf.rb:1:in `require': no such file to load -- mkmf (LoadError)
from extconf.rb:1
Gem files will remain installed in
/usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/hpricot-0.6 for inspection.
Results logged to
/usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/hpricot-0.6/ext/hpricot_scan/gem_make.out

Now what? The main problem here is that Hpricot and Mongrel both contain some C code that needs to be compiled. In order to fix this, you’ll need to install the Ruby & C development libraries for Ubuntu. To do that, just fire up Terminal and enter:

sudo apt-get install ruby1.8-dev linux-libc-dev libc6-dev

You should now be able to install Hpricot, Mongrel, or any other gem that requires you to build some C. It’s that easy!

What I’m Reading: 3/19

Matt Henry — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 14:49:33 +0000

Martian Headsets: Spolsky’s take on IE8 & web standards.
Translation From MS-Speak to English of Selected Portions of Joel Spolsky’s “Martian Headsets”: Mark Pilgrim’s take on the above.
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Install Mongrel & Hpricot Under Ubuntu

What I’m Reading: 3/19