Install RhoSync on ubuntu 11.10 (with fix)

Recently, I was trying to install RhoMobile suite on my ubuntu11.10 machine. And faced some issues for installing ‘rhosync’ package. This blog tells how to fix these issues (as they worked for me).

I am assuming ruby and gem are already installed on your machine.
Note: if you are on older version of ruby please upgrade to 1.9.2

Rhodes was installed without any problem –
[shell]
sudo gem install rhodes
[/shell]

Now, the problem arrived for installing RhoSync
[shell]
salil@local:~$ sudo gem install rhosync
Building native extensions. This could take a while…
ERROR: Error installing rhosync:
ERROR: Failed to build gem native extension.

/usr/bin/ruby1.9.1 extconf.rb
<internal:lib/rubygems/custom_require>:29:in `require’: no such file to load — mkmf (LoadError)
from <internal:lib/rubygems/custom_require>:29:in `require’
from extconf.rb:1:in `<main>’
[/shell]

To fix the above error, run following command —
[shell]
apt-get install ruby1.9.1-dev
[/shell]

Now retry installing rhosync.
[shell]
sudo gem install rhosync
[/shell]

Now, you will see the ‘rhosync’ getting installed successfully.

Another common error –
[shell]
ERROR: Could not find a valid gem ‘Rhosync’ (>= 0) in any repository
[/shell]

To fix the above error, check the following points-
1. Check the name of the package you are trying to install. It should be ‘rhosync’ instead of ‘Rhosync’. It’s case-sensitive.
2. It’s possible that the source for your gem repository is empty. So, add one with the following command –
[shell]gem sources –add http://rubygems.org[/shell]

Cheers!
Salil Kalia
Salil [at] IntelliGrape [dot] com
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