On Fri, 22 Apr 2011 00:57:13 +0100, Matt Harrison wrote: > I've just tried setting up a new development machine and I'm stuck > installing the ffi gem for ruby. > > According to a bug I found (can't find it now I'm afraid) the gentoo > devs do not support installing gems via the gem command and directed the > user to use the dev-ruby/ffi package. Unfortnately, that package is > absolutely ancient and unusable.
That is correct, we recommend to use our native Gentoo packages when present. If you have a problem with a package, then please file a bug report at https://bugs.gentoo.org/ ffi-0.6.3-r1 should be usable. > Anyway, I've got the ffi library install from portage, but when I try to > `gem install ffi`, I get the output seen in the attachement. Yes, you are trying to install a version of the ffi gem that is not compatible with your ruby version. ffi-0.6.3 is the latest version that reliably works with ruby 1.8. The ffi-1.x series never worked reliably with ruby 1.8, and the latest version have officially removed support for it and only work with ruby 1.9. This is also the reason that ffi-0.6.3 is the latest version in the tree. Kind regards, Hans
