Dirk.Net

If you get

Loading development environment (Rails 2.3.2)
/usr/local/lib/ruby/1.8/irb/completion.rb:10:in `require’: no such file to load — readline (LoadError)
        from /usr/local/lib/ruby/1.8/irb/completion.rb:10
        from /usr/local/lib/ruby/1.8/irb/init.rb:252:in `require’
        from /usr/local/lib/ruby/1.8/irb/init.rb:252:in `load_modules’
        from /usr/local/lib/ruby/1.8/irb/init.rb:250:in `each’
        from /usr/local/lib/ruby/1.8/irb/init.rb:250:in `load_modules’
        from /usr/local/lib/ruby/1.8/irb/init.rb:21:in `setup’
        from /usr/local/lib/ruby/1.8/irb.rb:54:in `start’
        from /usr/local/bin/irb:13

when running script/console, you might be missing some libraries after you’ve installed Ruby from source. So you might try (Ubuntu, Debian):

sudo apt-get install libncurses5-dev

sudo apt-get install libreadline5-dev

Then cd to the folder with your unpacked Ruby sources, subfolder ext/readline:

cd /usr/src/ruby-1.8.7-p72/ext/readline

ruby extconf.rb

make

sudo make install

There is no need to recompile Ruby. If you get any of these:

checking for tgetnum() in -lncurses… no
checking for tgetnum() in -ltermcap… no
checking for tgetnum() in -lcurses… no
checking for readline/readline.h… no
checking for editline/readline.h… no

you’re still missing libraries so re-check if the apt-get commands above completed without errors. Hope it helps.