Ruby 1.8.6 for Dapper

We have backported Ruby 1.8.6 packages to replace 1.8.4 for older Dapper-based Brightboxes. These packages provide ruby 1.8.6 (2007-09-24 patchlevel 111). They have been used in production but are not supported by us. To get a stable version of 1.8.6 we recommend moving to Ubuntu Hardy (now default on new Brightboxes).

These packages are NOT required for Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy).

Add the following line to your /etc/apt/sources.list file:

deb http://apt.brightbox.net/ dapper testing

If you're not on a Brightbox, you'll need to import our apt repository key:

wget http://apt.brightbox.net/release.asc -O - | sudo apt-key add -

Then upgrade:

sudo apt-get update
apt-get install irb1.8 libopenssl-ruby1.8 libreadline-ruby1.8 libruby1.8 rdoc1.8 ri1.8 ruby1.8 ruby1.8-dev

You'll then need to reinstall any gems that have C extensions, such as Ferret and Mongrel. You can identify which Gems might have C extentions using this command:

$ find /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems -name ext -type d
/usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/rmagick-1.15.10/ext
/usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/mongrel-1.0.1/ext
/usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/mongrel-1.0.1/doc/rdoc/files/ext
/usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/fastthread-1.0/ext
/usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/ferret-0.11.4/ext

You can reinstall each gem like this:

sudo gem install ferret

Most gems rebuild fine, but Mongrel in particular needed to be removed and then reinstalled before it's tests would pass properly:

sudo gem uninstall mongrel
sudo gem install mongrel

Run the test suite for whichever gems to verify all is well:

cd /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/mongrel-1.0.1
sudo rake test
Loaded suite /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/rake-0.7.3/lib/rake/rake_test_loader
Started
..................................................
Finished in 27.768867 seconds.

50 tests, 460 assertions, 0 failures, 0 errors

There are other packages in the testing repository which you may not want to install, so ensure you remove the line you added to /etc/apt/sources.conf.