
Ruby is one of the most popular language nowadays. Ruby is used for web applications and also for games etc. In this tutorial we will show you steps to install Ruby on Ubuntu 18.04. It’s used with Ruby on Rails framework.
Prerequisites
Before you start installation, ensure that you are logged in with non-root user account with sudo privileges.
Installing Ruby from Ubuntu Repositories
Ruby package is available in the default Ubuntu repositories. So you can install it using apt
package manager. To install Ruby from the default Ubuntu repositories, follow these steps:
At first, update the packages index list:
sudo apt update
Next install Ruby using below command:
sudo apt install ruby-full
You can verify the installation by issuing the below command and it will print the version of installed Ruby.
ruby --version
It should look like as below:
Output
ruby 2.5.1p57 (2018-03-29 revision 63029) [x86_64-linux-gnu]
Install Ruby using Rbenv
Rbenv is a Ruby version management tool. Using this tool you can easily switch the version of Ruby on same system if installed multiple versions. By default Rbenv doesn’t handle installing Ruby versions so we also need to install ruby-build
which is a tool that will help you to install specific version of Ruby which you need. Follow the instruction below to install Ruby using Rbenv:
First of all, update the package index list by typing:
sudo apt update
Next we will install dependencies for installation of rbenv and ruby-build:
sudo apt install git curl libssl-dev libreadline-dev zlib1g-dev autoconf bison build-essential libyaml-dev libreadline-dev libncurses5-dev libffi-dev libgdbm-dev
After that run the following curl command to install rbenv
and ruby-build
:
curl -sL https://github.com/rbenv/rbenv-installer/raw/master/bin/rbenv-installer | bash -
Above command will clone both rbenv and ruby-build repositories from GitHub to ~/.rbenv
directory.
Add $HOME/.rbenv/bin
to the system PATH.
If you are using Bash, run:
echo 'export PATH="$HOME/.rbenv/bin:$PATH"' >> ~/.bashrc
echo 'eval "$(rbenv init -)"' >> ~/.bashrc
source ~/.bashrc
If you are using Zsh run:
echo 'export PATH="$HOME/.rbenv/bin:$PATH"' >> ~/.zshrc
echo 'eval "$(rbenv init -)"' >> ~/.zshrc
source ~/.zshrc
Select the latest and stable version of Ruby and you can set default version as per your need.
rbenv install 2.6.3
rbenv global 2.6.3
You can confirm installation by issuing below command:
ruby -v
It should show output as below:
Output
ruby 2.6.3p62 (2019-04-16 revision 67580) [x86_64-linux]
Ruby Program Example
We are going to create a simple ruby program. So create a demo.rb
file using your favorite editor:
sudo nano demo.rb
Paste below lines in to that file:
puts "Ruby Simple Demo"
Save file and exit from editor using Ctrl+x
.
To run demo.rb
file issue below command:
ruby demo.rb
It will print simple output as below:
Output
Ruby Simple Demo
Conclusion
You have successfully learned multiple ways to install Ruby on Ubuntu 18.04 machine. If you have any problem or suggestion please leave a comment below.
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