How to use gem to install Rails on Ubuntu

Question

The error message:

Building native extensions.  This could take a while...
ERROR:  Error installing rails:
  ERROR: Failed to build gem native extension.

           


        

Answer 1

You get this error because the development dependencies for Ruby are missing.

I suggest that you install and use RVM to solve this, check the official and updated instructions here https://rvm.io/rvm/install

At the time when I answer this question I followed these steps:

gpg --keyserver hkp://keys.gnupg.net --recv-keys
409B6B1796C275462A1703113804BB82D39DC0E3

\curl -sSL https://get.rvm.io | bash

If you get this warning

  * WARNING: You have '~/.profile' file, you might want to load it,
    to do that add the following line to '/home/mao/.bash_profile':

  source ~/.profile

execute this command:

echo source ~/.profile >> ~/.bash_profile

Then, reload/apply the bash_profile that you just updated by executing this:

source ~/.bash_profile

Finally run this to install the requirements:

rvm requirements

This should work for any Linux distribution like Ubuntu, Fedora, Debian, Redhat, Slackware.