jekyll serve dependency error - Could not open 'lib curl'

Question

I am trying to run bundle exec jekyll serve but it comes up with the error:

Dependency Error: Yikes! It looks like you don't have jekyll-remote-theme or one of its dependencies installed. In order to use Jekyll as currently configured, you'll need to install this gem. The full error message from Ruby is: 'Could not open library 'libcurl': The specified module could not be found. . Could not open library 'libcurl.dll': The specified module could not be found. . Could not open library 'libcurl.so.4': The specified module could not be found. . Could not open library 'libcurl.so.4.dll': The specified module could not be found. ' If you run into trouble, you can find helpful resources at https://jekyllrb.com/help/! jekyll 3.6.2 | Error: jekyll-remote-theme

So I checked if curl was installed:

$ curl --version curl 7.50.1 (x86_64-w64-mingw32) libcurl/7.50.1 OpenSSL/1.0.2h zlib/1.2.8 libidn/1.33 libssh2/1.7.0 nghttp2/1.13.0 librtmp/2.3 Protocols: dict file ftp ftps gopher http https imap imaps ldap ldaps pop3 pop3s rtmp rtsp scp sftp smtp smtps telnet tftp Features: IDN IPv6 Largefile SSPI Kerberos SPNEGO NTLM SSL libz TLS-SRP HTTP2 Metalink

I've searched for similar questions but the solutions don't seem to be relevant to my issue. I'm new to Jekyll and Ruby and I just wanted to be able to view my Github Pages offline.

I am using Windows 7 64-bit. Any suggestions would be appreciated!

Answer 1

I had the same problem. My solution was the one of TT--, but I put the downloaded file libcurl.dll here:

C:\Ruby24-x64\bin

Any other folder got me the same error, even if it was in the PATH.

Answer 2

My work around was to omit the Jekyll plugins from the Gemfile.

Original Gemfile:

source 'https://rubygems.org' gem 'github-pages', group: :jekyll_plugins

New:

source 'https://rubygems.org' gem 'github-pages'

However, if you need to use the plugins, check out TT--'s answer below. I couldn't get it working myself, but it is the exact same problem so if it worked for him I guess it should work.

Answer 3

Working solution

It's probably not the 'correct' way but this worked for me:

• Obtain a libcurl.dll from one of the packages here:

  https://curl.haxx.se/download.html#Win64

  (Link was updated, but originally pointed to version 7.40)

• Put it on the PATH somehow.

  • (I just put it under \ruby24\bin\)
  • Maybe for you it's C:\Ruby24-x64\bin, which others have suggested.

About the problem

• Seems to be coming from Ruby-FFI. (as described here)

• I got the same error above about the dependencies of jekyll-remote-theme.

  (One of them is typhoeus which uses FFI.)

• Also, doing a github-pages health-check showed this error :

    ffi-1.9.18-x64-mingw32/lib/ffi/library.rb:147:in `block in ffi_lib': Could not 
    open libra (LoadError): The specified module could not be found.
    Could not open library 'libcurl.dll': The specified module could not be found.
    Could not open library 'libcurl.so.4': The specified module could not be 
    found.
    Could not open library 'libcurl.so.4.dll': The specified module could not be 
    found.

Things I tried that didn't work:

• Putting on the PATH the cygcurl-4.dll obtained from the current Curl Download Wizard
• Renaming the above cygcurl-4.dll to libcurl.dlland putting it on the PATH
• Installing the msys2 package libcurl-devel 7.57.0-1
• Renaming the msys-curl-4.dll (from msys2 found at msys64\usr\bin) to libcurl.dll

Didn't try:

• Building curl / libcurl from the latest source. Because I already had the latest according to pacman -Ss libcurl:

  msys/libcurl 7.57.0-1 (libraries) [installed] Multi-protocol file transfer library (runtime)

  msys/libcurl-devel 7.57.0-1 (development) [installed] Libcurl headers and libraries

Answer 4

The problem I see is mixing the usage of bundle and gem commands, considering you have a Gemfile with just the github-pages gem in your Jekyll root path, do this:

bundle install
bundle exec jekyll serve

That should create a folder with all needed dependencies and then execute the newly installed Jekyll version.