Installation question

ruby-talk
1

I seem to have the main Ruby folder in /usr/lib/ruby. Is that the
correct place?

You've followed a standard installation procedure. Just leave
everything in the /usr directory and subdirectories
where it is, and make a directory

/home/<your name>/ruby

(for instance by calling a shell and typing in

su <RETURN>
<Your superuser/computer administrator password> <RETURN>
cd / <RETURN>
mkdir /home/<your name>/ruby <RETURN>
or by some graphical way Mac OSX provides)

You can then call your favourite editor, type some Ruby script,
save it in /home/<your name>/ruby, and run it from there.

Best regards,
Axel

2

While these are perfect instructions for any of the fairly standard unixes, they're a little off when it comes to OSX:

  - home directories exist under the /Users directory, not /home
  - the 'su' command isn't usable in the default configuration

Also, why would someone need to be the superuser to make a directory under their home directory? Surely 'mkdir ~/ruby' would be a lot quicker? Or even 'cd' 'mkdir ruby'?

I realise that people are trying to help, but I'd also like to suggest that unless people are familiar with a platform, they hold back on giving advice about it.

My reasoning for this request is this: not-quite-right advice is actually a fair bit more dangerous than flat-out wrong advice for novice users (who are the kind of users who need and ask for advice).

Wrong advice is obviously wrong, it gets tried and discarded right away.

Not-quite-wrong advice costs people a lot of time and effort before they realise that they've been led down the garden path, or can lead people into some bad practices and habits.

matthew smillie.

ยทยทยท

On May 29, 2006, at 22:46, Nuralanur@aol.com wrote:

I seem to have the main Ruby folder in /usr/lib/ruby. Is that the
correct place?

You've followed a standard installation procedure. Just leave
everything in the /usr directory and subdirectories
where it is, and make a directory

/home/<your name>/ruby

(for instance by calling a shell and typing in

su <RETURN>
<Your superuser/computer administrator password> <RETURN>
cd / <RETURN>
mkdir /home/<your name>/ruby <RETURN>
or by some graphical way Mac OSX provides)