Hi,
I've run amuck Sunday afternoon trying to install fxRuby and fox under OSX, and after many hours of errors, trying mac-ports, fink, building from source, updating to Ruby 1.8.6 (from 1.8.4) and ripping various bits out and trying to replace them, I'm now in a complete mess.
Any ideas from anyone as to how I wipe Ruby and start from scratch. I'm newish to the mac and unix. I can get around, edit files etc, but don't have much understanding behind what I do (any advice here much appreciated too). Just enough knowledge to be dangerous.
Cheers,
Dave
Uh, yeah, 1st of all... don't use more than one package manager on a machine (any *nix). Fink or MacPorts not both. Results can be unpredictable, though usually harmless.
Remove all of those. Remove all the stuff you installed.
Do a new clean install.
I recommend going with the building from source using the Hivelogic installation guide. (google Ruby and OS X and Hivelogic, you will find it, make sure to visit their home page first so that you find the latest version of the installation guide)
This will give you more practice working at the unix command line, but it will also help you become familiar with where and how stuff is installed on your machine and in Ruby. While you're at it, pick up the book "Learning Unix for OS X Tiger" (there is an older panther version too) It is a gentle intro to unix. As a reference ( for any type of unix) get "Unix in a Nutshell"
You really won't get hurt and it is actually quite useful to know a lot of that stuff. What's more, it's a heck of a lot easier to install Ruby manually than PHP!!
···
On Jul 2, 2007, at 5:43 AM, Sharon Phillips wrote:
Hi,
I've run amuck Sunday afternoon trying to install fxRuby and fox under OSX, and after many hours of errors, trying mac-ports, fink, building from source, updating to Ruby 1.8.6 (from 1.8.4) and ripping various bits out and trying to replace them, I'm now in a complete mess.
Any ideas from anyone as to how I wipe Ruby and start from scratch. I'm newish to the mac and unix. I can get around, edit files etc, but don't have much understanding behind what I do (any advice here much appreciated too). Just enough knowledge to be dangerous.
Cheers,
Dave
Thanks John,
I've seen the book I think, but have held off buying any Tiger books for about a year now as Leopard was 'imminent'... Seems like it might be a good idea anyway.
I'll try stripping it all and building from source. I'm a pretty experiences Windows guy, but most of that knowledge is meaningless in the *nix world, so here's a dumb question: How do I remove all the stuff i installed? Finder doesn't seem to show a lot of places (which is good), and I'm not familiar with where everything goes. Also, am I limited to vi or pico when editing .profile files, or is it possible to use a gui based editor?
Looks like I'll have to buy the book. 
Cheers,
Dave
···
On 03/07/2007, at 3:28 AM, John Joyce wrote:
On Jul 2, 2007, at 5:43 AM, Sharon Phillips wrote:
Hi,
I've run amuck Sunday afternoon trying to install fxRuby and fox under OSX, and after many hours of errors, trying mac-ports, fink, building from source, updating to Ruby 1.8.6 (from 1.8.4) and ripping various bits out and trying to replace them, I'm now in a complete mess.
Any ideas from anyone as to how I wipe Ruby and start from scratch. I'm newish to the mac and unix. I can get around, edit files etc, but don't have much understanding behind what I do (any advice here much appreciated too). Just enough knowledge to be dangerous.
Cheers,
Dave
Uh, yeah, 1st of all... don't use more than one package manager on a machine (any *nix). Fink or MacPorts not both. Results can be unpredictable, though usually harmless.
Remove all of those. Remove all the stuff you installed.
Do a new clean install.
I recommend going with the building from source using the Hivelogic installation guide. (google Ruby and OS X and Hivelogic, you will find it, make sure to visit their home page first so that you find the latest version of the installation guide)
This will give you more practice working at the unix command line, but it will also help you become familiar with where and how stuff is installed on your machine and in Ruby. While you're at it, pick up the book "Learning Unix for OS X Tiger" (there is an older panther version too) It is a gentle intro to unix. As a reference ( for any type of unix) get "Unix in a Nutshell"
You really won't get hurt and it is actually quite useful to know a lot of that stuff. What's more, it's a heck of a lot easier to install Ruby manually than PHP!!
Sharon Phillips wrote:
I'll try stripping it all and building from source. I'm a pretty experiences Windows guy, but most of that knowledge is meaningless in the *nix world, so here's a dumb question: How do I remove all the stuff i installed? Finder doesn't seem to show a lot of places (which is good), and I'm not familiar with where everything goes. Also, am I limited to vi or pico when editing .profile files, or is it possible to use a gui based editor?
Finder won't show you these directories, afaik. Start Terminal.app and use a command line. Unlike Windows, OS X doesn't impose a particular directory into which things must be installed. Instead you pick a directory to install into and then add that directory to OS X's list of places to look. To keep the list short there are some conventions. Very, very critical programs are installed in /bin. Other programs and libraries that the system needs are in /usr and its subdirectories. You do not want to mess with these directories.
Locally installed programs and libraries are typically installed in subdirectories of /usr/local. This is the default directory for most generic installer programs. Fink installs things in directories rooted at /sw. MacPorts installs things in directories rooted at /opt. If you're really willing to go back to the starting gate you can simply delete these two directories, although it means you'll have to reinstall Fink or MacPorts if you wanted to use them again.
When you install Ruby "by hand," the default install directory is /usr/local.
You can use any text editor to edit .profile as long as it doesn't introduce formatting information into the file. That is, don't use a "word processor" like Microsoft Word or OpenOffice.org Writer or OS X's TextEdit.
Lastly, congratulations on learning how to use OS X! OS X is a magnificent workhorse of an operating system. Yes, iLife and all that are wonderful, but if all you ever do with your Mac is click on things you're wasting a good part of your computer.
···
--
RMagick OS X Installer [http://rubyforge.org/projects/rmagick/\]
RMagick Hints & Tips [http://rubyforge.org/forum/forum.php?forum_id=1618\]
RMagick Installation FAQ [http://rmagick.rubyforge.org/install-faq.html\]
Oh yeah, you've got a lot to get up to speed on. Buy the tiger book, pretty much all of it will still be valid with leopard. Probably all of it. That and / or the Unix in A Nutshell book will also give you advice about installing and uninstalling things like Fink and MacPorts.
The Unix in a Nutshell is actually even better. It covers all the OS X specific stuff too.
The things you'll to learn about are the dot files ( they're just hidden from the user by the dot )
and how to configure and control Bash. It's a lot and can be confusing at first, but you don't need to memorize the stuff, just have a good reference book or 2 handy. The nice thing about the Nutshell book is that it also covers Linux and Solaris. This is useful for web hosting ...
There is a free GUI text editor called TextWrangler. It's great and free, but for Ruby in particular, the best is TextMate and it is about 50 dollars, but very much worth it. There is also a TextMate book from the Pragmatic Programmers, publishers of the pickaxe book and it is available cheaply as a pdf ebook.
One more tip. in Terminal.app in OS X, you can save a copy of all the stuff you do in a session. This can be useful to refer back to later.
Uninstalling is mostly a matter of deleting things.
I'm going to leave it to you to buy a book and get the commands, because they'll also give you the details and warnings.
Unix is powerful.
Oh yeah, there is a Dashboard Widget for OS X that allows you to turn on/off hidden files in the GUI conveniently. you can download free from the apple site via Apple Menu > OS X Software...
···
On Jul 2, 2007, at 5:27 PM, Sharon Phillips wrote:
On 03/07/2007, at 3:28 AM, John Joyce wrote:
On Jul 2, 2007, at 5:43 AM, Sharon Phillips wrote:
Hi,
I've run amuck Sunday afternoon trying to install fxRuby and fox under OSX, and after many hours of errors, trying mac-ports, fink, building from source, updating to Ruby 1.8.6 (from 1.8.4) and ripping various bits out and trying to replace them, I'm now in a complete mess.
Any ideas from anyone as to how I wipe Ruby and start from scratch. I'm newish to the mac and unix. I can get around, edit files etc, but don't have much understanding behind what I do (any advice here much appreciated too). Just enough knowledge to be dangerous.
Cheers,
Dave
Uh, yeah, 1st of all... don't use more than one package manager on a machine (any *nix). Fink or MacPorts not both. Results can be unpredictable, though usually harmless.
Remove all of those. Remove all the stuff you installed.
Do a new clean install.
I recommend going with the building from source using the Hivelogic installation guide. (google Ruby and OS X and Hivelogic, you will find it, make sure to visit their home page first so that you find the latest version of the installation guide)
This will give you more practice working at the unix command line, but it will also help you become familiar with where and how stuff is installed on your machine and in Ruby. While you're at it, pick up the book "Learning Unix for OS X Tiger" (there is an older panther version too) It is a gentle intro to unix. As a reference ( for any type of unix) get "Unix in a Nutshell"
You really won't get hurt and it is actually quite useful to know a lot of that stuff. What's more, it's a heck of a lot easier to install Ruby manually than PHP!!
Thanks John,
I've seen the book I think, but have held off buying any Tiger books for about a year now as Leopard was 'imminent'... Seems like it might be a good idea anyway.
I'll try stripping it all and building from source. I'm a pretty experiences Windows guy, but most of that knowledge is meaningless in the *nix world, so here's a dumb question: How do I remove all the stuff i installed? Finder doesn't seem to show a lot of places (which is good), and I'm not familiar with where everything goes. Also, am I limited to vi or pico when editing .profile files, or is it possible to use a gui based editor?
Looks like I'll have to buy the book.
Cheers,
Dave
On the topic of Finder, you can get to any directory you want by
typing Command-Shift-G (for Go to folder)
This then opens a dialog box and lets you type in a path (say, /usr )
which then displays that tree. It also unhides the directory branch
you are in at root for the duration of the Finder window you are in.
Usefull when you want to dig around.
Regards
Mikel
Oh yeah, you've got a lot to get up to speed on. Buy the tiger book, pretty much all of it will still be valid with leopard. Probably all of it. That and / or the Unix in A Nutshell book will also give you advice about installing and uninstalling things like Fink and MacPorts.
I've found the Tiger book in the local technical bookshop (insert plug for bookware.com.au here) and shall pick it up later this week (better run it by my wife first ;-).
Thanks to everyone for your comments and advice. Looks like I've a bit to learn. Looking forward to it.
Cheers,
Dave
Mikel Lindsaar wrote:
On the topic of Finder, you can get to any directory you want by
typing Command-Shift-G (for Go to folder)
This then opens a dialog box and lets you type in a path (say, /usr )
which then displays that tree. It also unhides the directory branch
you are in at root for the duration of the Finder window you are in.
Usefull when you want to dig around.
Interesting. Thanks. I guess I'm just a command-line kinda guy, though. Much as I love my GUI apps like iTunes and Safari and TextMate, when I want to do anything "serious" I always go to the command line. Somehow I just trust find/grep/ls/cd/rm and the others.
···
--
RMagick OS X Installer [http://rubyforge.org/projects/rmagick/\]
RMagick Hints & Tips [http://rubyforge.org/forum/forum.php?forum_id=1618\]
RMagick Installation FAQ [http://rmagick.rubyforge.org/install-faq.html\]
No worries, it probably won't be long before you're answering my questions!
···
On Jul 3, 2007, at 3:56 AM, Sharon Phillips wrote:
Oh yeah, you've got a lot to get up to speed on. Buy the tiger book, pretty much all of it will still be valid with leopard. Probably all of it. That and / or the Unix in A Nutshell book will also give you advice about installing and uninstalling things like Fink and MacPorts.
I've found the Tiger book in the local technical bookshop (insert plug for bookware.com.au here) and shall pick it up later this week (better run it by my wife first ;-).
Thanks to everyone for your comments and advice. Looks like I've a bit to learn. Looking forward to it.
Cheers,
Dave
Oh, so true... but the GUI is really handy when you want to just
delete 11 out of 50 files.... command click click shift click drag
delete.
Mikel
Mikel Lindsaar wrote:
Oh, so true... but the GUI is really handy when you want to just
delete 11 out of 50 files.... command click click shift click drag
delete.
Mikel
Agreed. I think what we're both saying is that the more tools you have in your toolbox the easier your work can be. Those folks who only know clicking are missing out on a lot of good tools.
···
--
RMagick OS X Installer [http://rubyforge.org/projects/rmagick/\]
RMagick Hints & Tips [http://rubyforge.org/forum/forum.php?forum_id=1618\]
RMagick Installation FAQ [http://rmagick.rubyforge.org/install-faq.html\]
When you respond without quoting context and top post, it makes it
very difficult to read your emails.
···
On 7/2/07, Mikel Lindsaar <raasdnil@gmail.com> wrote:
Oh, so true... but the GUI is really handy when you want to just
delete 11 out of 50 files.... command click click shift click drag
delete.
