One of my tasks today at work was to install numerous Ruby gems on a couple of our development servers. One of those gems was called webrat which is used for “Ruby acceptance testing and for web applications”. When I attempted to install webrat using “gem install webrat” from a Linux shell I received some errors which I describe below along with how to resolve the error in my scenario. It is likely for you to get similar errors however not the same exact errors so the key is analyzing the output of the “gem install” command to see if it will lead you to resolution.
Ruby Gem: Webrat Install Error:
- [root@dev ~]# gem install webrat rspec-rails rspec database_cleaner
- Building native extensions. This could take a while...
- ERROR: Error installing webrat:
- ERROR: Failed to build gem native extension.
- /usr/local/bin/ruby extconf.rb
- checking for iconv.h in /opt/local/include/,/opt/local/include/libxml2,/opt/local/include,/opt/local/include,/opt/local/include/libxml2,/usr/local/include,/usr/local/include/libxml2,/usr/local/include,/usr/local/include/libxml2,/usr/include,/usr/include/libxml2... yes
- checking for libxml/parser.h in /opt/local/include/,/opt/local/include/libxml2,/opt/local/include,/opt/local/include,/opt/local/include/libxml2,/usr/local/include,/usr/local/include/libxml2,/usr/local/include,/usr/local/include/libxml2,/usr/include,/usr/include/libxml2... yes
- checking for libxslt/xslt.h in /opt/local/include/,/opt/local/include/libxml2,/opt/local/include,/opt/local/include,/opt/local/include/libxml2,/usr/local/include,/usr/local/include/libxml2,/usr/local/include,/usr/local/include/libxml2,/usr/include,/usr/include/libxml2... no
- libxslt is missing. try 'port install libxslt' or 'yum install libxslt-devel'
- *** extconf.rb failed ***
- Could not create Makefile due to some reason, probably lack of
- necessary libraries and/or headers. Check the mkmf.log file for more
- details. You may need configuration options.
- Provided configuration options:
- --with-opt-dir
- --without-opt-dir
- --with-opt-include
- --without-opt-include=${opt-dir}/include
- --with-opt-lib
- --without-opt-lib=${opt-dir}/lib
- --with-make-prog
- --without-make-prog
- --srcdir=.
- --curdir
- --ruby=/usr/local/bin/ruby
- --with-iconv-dir
- --without-iconv-dir
- --with-iconv-include
- --without-iconv-include=${iconv-dir}/include
- --with-iconv-lib
- --without-iconv-lib=${iconv-dir}/lib
- --with-xml2-dir
- --without-xml2-dir
- --with-xml2-include
- --without-xml2-include=${xml2-dir}/include
- --with-xml2-lib
- --without-xml2-lib=${xml2-dir}/lib
- --with-xslt-dir
- --without-xslt-dir
- --with-xslt-include
- --without-xslt-include=${xslt-dir}/include
- --with-xslt-lib
- --without-xslt-lib=${xslt-dir}/lib
- Gem files will remain installed in /usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/nokogiri-1.4.1 for inspection.
- Results logged to /usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/nokogiri-1.4.1/ext/nokogiri/gem_make.out
Analyzing The Webrat Gem Install Error:
Typically you will be able to locate the specific error right in the output of a failed gem install. You may have looked over it in the above output but the third library file that the nokogiri gem depends on is where the failure is located. Now you may be thinking I was installing webrat so who cares about the nokogiri gem but the reality is that webrat requires the nokogiri gem so if this fails then the installation of webrat will also fail. If you are unable to locate the error in the output to the shell you should next check the mkmf.log file located in build directory of the failed gem such as the directory below for nokogiri.
Ruby Nokogiri Gem Build Directory:
- /usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/nokogiri-1.4.1/ext/nokogiri/mkmf.log
Even though we already have the error that caused the failure a quick look at the last part of the mkmf.log file displays the same type of details.
Nokogiri Gem mkmf.log Displaying Install Error Details:
- nokogiri_find_header: checking for libxslt/xslt.h in /opt/local/include/,/opt/local/include/libxml2,/opt/local/include,/opt/local/in
- clude,/opt/local/include/libxml2,/usr/local/include,/usr/local/include/libxml2,/usr/local/include,/usr/local/include/libxml2,/usr/in
- clude,/usr/include/libxml2... -------------------- no
- "gcc -E -I/usr/include/libxml2 -I/usr/include -I. -I/usr/local/lib/ruby/1.8/i686-linux -I. -I/opt/local/include/ -I/opt/local/includ
- e/libxml2 -I/opt/local/include -g -O2 -g -DXP_UNIX -O3 -Wall -Wcast-qual -Wwrite-strings -Wconversion -Wmissing-noreturn -Winline
- conftest.c -o conftest.i"
- conftest.c:1:26: error: libxslt/xslt.h: No such file or directory
- checked program was:
- /* begin */
- 1: #include <libxslt/xslt.h>
- /* end */
So the error is related to libxslt which can probably be resolved using the recommended resolution in the shell error output. The recommendation is to install the libxslt-devel package via yum which can be done using the below syntax on CentOS. Other package managers should be very similar and you would just need to locate the correct package name in case its a bit different.
Install libxslt-devel Using Yum On CentOS:
- [root@dev gems]# yum install libxslt-devel
- Setting up Install Process
- Parsing package install arguments
- Resolving Dependencies
- --> Running transaction check
- ---> Package libxslt-devel.i386 0:1.1.17-2.el5_2.2 set to be updated
- --> Processing Dependency: libgcrypt-devel for package: libxslt-devel
- --> Processing Dependency: libexslt.so.0 for package: libxslt-devel
- --> Processing Dependency: libxslt.so.1 for package: libxslt-devel
- ---> Package libxslt-devel.x86_64 0:1.1.17-2.el5_2.2 set to be updated
- --> Running transaction check
- ---> Package libgcrypt-devel.i386 0:1.4.4-5.el5 set to be updated
- --> Processing Dependency: libgcrypt = 1.4.4-5.el5 for package: libgcrypt-devel
- --> Processing Dependency: libgpg-error-devel for package: libgcrypt-devel
- ---> Package libxslt.i386 0:1.1.17-2.el5_2.2 set to be updated
- --> Running transaction check
- ---> Package libgcrypt.x86_64 0:1.4.4-5.el5 set to be updated
- ---> Package libgcrypt.i386 0:1.4.4-5.el5 set to be updated
- ---> Package libgpg-error-devel.i386 0:1.4-2 set to be updated
- --> Finished Dependency Resolution
- Dependencies Resolved
- =============================================================================
- Package Arch Version Repository Size
- =============================================================================
- Installing:
- libxslt-devel x86_64 1.1.17-2.el5_2.2 base 308 k
- libxslt-devel i386 1.1.17-2.el5_2.2 base 295 k
- Updating:
- libgcrypt x86_64 1.4.4-5.el5 base 233 k
- libgcrypt i386 1.4.4-5.el5 base 250 k
- Installing for dependencies:
- libgcrypt-devel i386 1.4.4-5.el5 base 396 k
- libgpg-error-devel i386 1.4-2 base 17 k
- libxslt i386 1.1.17-2.el5_2.2 base 485 k
- Transaction Summary
- =============================================================================
- Install 5 Package(s)
- Update 2 Package(s)
- Remove 0 Package(s)
- Total download size: 1.9 M
- Is this ok [y/N]: y
- Downloading Packages:
- (1/7): libgpg-error-devel 100% |=========================| 17 kB 00:00
- (2/7): libgcrypt-1.4.4-5. 100% |=========================| 250 kB 00:00
- (3/7): libgcrypt-1.4.4-5. 100% |=========================| 233 kB 00:00
- (4/7): libxslt-devel-1.1. 100% |=========================| 295 kB 00:00
- (5/7): libgcrypt-devel-1. 100% |=========================| 396 kB 00:00
- (6/7): libxslt-devel-1.1. 100% |=========================| 308 kB 00:00
- (7/7): libxslt-1.1.17-2.e 100% |=========================| 485 kB 00:00
- Running rpm_check_debug
- Running Transaction Test
- Finished Transaction Test
- Transaction Test Succeeded
- Running Transaction
- Updating : libgcrypt ######################### [1/9]
- Updating : libgcrypt ######################### [2/9]
- Installing: libxslt ######################### [3/9]
- Installing: libgpg-error-devel ######################### [4/9]
- Installing: libgcrypt-devel ######################### [5/9]
- Installing: libxslt-devel ######################### [6/9]
- Installing: libxslt-devel ######################### [7/9]
- Cleanup : libgcrypt ######################### [8/9]
- Cleanup : libgcrypt ######################### [9/9]
- Installed: libxslt-devel.x86_64 0:1.1.17-2.el5_2.2 libxslt-devel.i386 0:1.1.17-2.el5_2.2
- Dependency Installed: libgcrypt-devel.i386 0:1.4.4-5.el5 libgpg-error-devel.i386 0:1.4-2 libxslt.i386 0:1.1.17-2.el5_2.2
- Updated: libgcrypt.x86_64 0:1.4.4-5.el5 libgcrypt.i386 0:1.4.4-5.el5
- Complete!
As you can see above there were a bunch of dependencies installed along with the libxslt-devel package but this should now clear the way to install webrat and nokogiri without issue. Below is the second attempt after resolving the only issues located during the first install attempt.
Install The Webrat Gem:
- [root@dev gems]# gem install webrat
- Building native extensions. This could take a while...
- Successfully installed nokogiri-1.4.1
- Successfully installed rack-test-0.5.3
- Successfully installed webrat-0.7.0
- 3 gems installed
- Installing ri documentation for nokogiri-1.4.1...
- No definition for parse_memory
- No definition for parse_file
- No definition for parse_with
- No definition for get_options
- No definition for set_options
- Installing ri documentation for rack-test-0.5.3...
- Installing ri documentation for webrat-0.7.0...
- Installing RDoc documentation for nokogiri-1.4.1...
- No definition for parse_memory
- No definition for parse_file
- No definition for parse_with
- No definition for get_options
- No definition for set_options
- Installing RDoc documentation for rack-test-0.5.3...
- Installing RDoc documentation for webrat-0.7.0...
- [root@dev gems]#
This time webrat was installed properly along with two gem dependencies which included the rack-test gem and the nokogiri gem.
Distributed Programming with Ruby (Paperback)
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Advanced Rails: Building Industrial-Strength Web Apps in Record Time (Paperback)
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Thank you Sir! That worked a treat :D
Hello Karl,
Great to hear! Thanks for taking the time to leave feedback.
Thanks.
alex