Ruby packages for Ubuntu

Brightbox have been providing optimised Ruby packages for Ubuntu for years. We’re currently maintaining packages for Ruby 2.4, 2.3, 2.2, 2.1, 2.0, 1.9.3, and 1.8.7. Our Ruby 1.9.3 and 1.8.7 packages are modified with various performance improvements.

Ruby 2.4

We maintain Ruby 2.4 packages for Ubuntu Artful, Xenial and Trusty. Our Ruby 2.4 packages are built from unmodified versions of Ruby.

Ruby 2.3

We maintain Ruby 2.3 packages for Ubuntu Artful, Xenial and Trusty. Our Ruby 2.3 packages are built from unmodified versions of Ruby.

Ruby 2.2

We maintain Ruby 2.2 packages for Ubuntu Artful, Xenial and Trusty. Our Ruby 2.2 packages are built from unmodified versions of Ruby.

Ruby 2.1

We maintain Ruby 2.1 packages for Ubuntu Artful, Xenial and Trusty. Our Ruby 2.1 packages are built from unmodified versions of Ruby except for backported security fixes.

Ruby 2.0

We maintain Ruby 2.0 packages for Ubuntu Artful, Xenial and Trusty. Our Ruby 2.0 packages are built from unmodified versions of Ruby except for backported security fixes.

Ruby 1.9.3

We maintain Ruby 1.9.3 packages for Ubuntu Artful, Xenial and Trusty. Our Ruby 1.9.3 packages include some major performance improvements:

• Built with Google’s high performance memory allocator, tcmalloc
• Added Sokolov Yura’s performance patches
• Added Narihiro Nakamura’s Bitmap Marking garbage collector (backported by Sakolov Yura)
• Greg Price’s “require” performance fixes.
• Patched to export the right symbols to work with ruby-debug
• Updated rubygems to latest 1.8.x release

Ruby 1.8.7

We maintain Ruby 1.8.7 packages for Ubuntu Artful, Xenial and Trusty. Our Ruby 1.8.7 packages include some improvements:

• Built with Google’s high performance memory allocator, tcmalloc
• Updated rubygems packages to latest 1.8.x release
• Backported security fixes

Installation

All the above packages are available from our Launchpad package repository.

Adding the repository

If you’re using Ubuntu 14.04 (Trusty) or newer then you can add the package repository like this:

$ sudo apt-get install software-properties-common
$ sudo apt-add-repository ppa:brightbox/ruby-ng
$ sudo apt-get update

Or if you’re on Ubuntu 12.04 (Precise) or older

$ sudo apt-get install python-software-properties
$ sudo apt-add-repository ppa:brightbox/ruby-ng
$ sudo apt-get update

Installing the packages

Each version of Ruby has its own packages - just install the packages for the versions you’d like to use.

So to install Ruby1.8, Ruby 1.9.3 and Ruby 2.2

$ sudo apt-get install ruby1.8 ruby1.9.3 ruby2.2

And you’ll usually need the dev packages too, so you can build native extensions

$ sudo apt-get install ruby1.8-dev ruby1.9.3-dev ruby2.2-dev

Then you can run the different versions of ruby like this:

$ ruby1.8 -v
ruby 1.8.7 (2017-12-15 patchlevel 377) [x86_64-linux]

$ ruby1.9.3 -v
ruby 1.9.3p556 (2017-12-15) [x86_64-linux] Brightbox

$ gem1.8 install bundler

$ gem1.9.3 install bundler

Switching the default Ruby version

You can also switch the default Ruby version back and forth between versions using the ruby-switch tool:

$ sudo apt-get install ruby-switch

$ ruby -v
ruby 1.8.7 (2017-12-15 patchlevel 377) [x86_64-linux]

$ ruby-switch --list
ruby1.8
ruby1.9.1
ruby2.0
ruby2.1
ruby2.2
ruby2.3
ruby2.4

$ sudo ruby-switch --set ruby1.9.1
update-alternatives: using /usr/bin/ruby1.9.1 to provide /usr/bin/ruby (ruby) in manual mode.
update-alternatives: using /usr/bin/gem1.9.1 to provide /usr/bin/gem (gem) in manual mode.

$ ruby -v
ruby 1.9.3p556 (2017-12-15) [x86_64-linux] Brightbox

(note that Ruby 1.9.3 shows as 1.9.1, due to a historical Debian thing about binary compatibility)

Gem binaries

Any binaries installed by gems (such as bundler’s bundle command) might not automatically use the current default version of ruby (preferring the version that was default at the time it was installed). In that case, you can explicitly run it under a specific version like this:

$ ruby1.9.1 -S bundle -v
Bundler version 1.6.3

If you’re using multiple versions of ruby on a server, it’s best to explicitly run any ruby binaries with the desired version of Ruby like this.

Ruby 1.8 gems

The ruby 1.8 packages on Lucid and Precise don’t come with the rubygems libraries, so you need to install that separately if you need it:

$ sudo apt-get install ruby1.8 rubygems

You don’t need this on Trusty or Xenial though.

Passenger Support

We used to provide Phusion Passenger packages but it’s now recommended to use Phusion’s own Ubuntu packages for Passenger (we helped develop them, so we know they’re alright ;)

Mailing List

If you need any help, have any feedback or just want to follow along with the latest announcements, join the Google Groups list. All feedback is always welcome - we like to hear from you even if everything worked ok.

Experimental repository

We have a separate experimental repository that holds test builds.

We recommend only using this experimental repository for testing purposes. Use the main repository for stable updates.

Support

If you’re not a paying customer, you can get free support from the mailing list. If you’d like to become a paying customer you can signup here for our cloud service. If you’d like paid support specifically for Ruby, or our Ruby Packages, contact us at hello@brightbox.com to arrange it.

Last updated: 22 Jun 2018 at 10:51 UTC