"gem update" and native gibblies

I tried running gem update on my new Joyent "shared accelerator" (translation: hosting service)

This is what happened:

[marin:~] jdtangney$ gem update
Updating installed gems
Updating eventmachine
WARNING:  Installing to ~/.gem since /usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8 and
/usr/local/bin aren't both writable.
Building native extensions.  This could take a while...
ERROR:  While executing gem ... (Gem::Installer::ExtensionBuildError)
ERROR: Failed to build gem native extension.

The nice part is that it automatically noticed that it needed to do a local install. But that cryptic error message — wtf?

Looking down a little further in the spew, I saw

shared -o rubyeventmachine.so epoll.o emwin.o ssl.o ed.o sigs.o cplusplus.o em.o pipe.o rubymain.o files.o binder.o kb.o cmain.o page.o -L. -L/usr/local/lib -Wl,-R/usr/local/lib -L. -L/usr/lib -Wl,-R/usr/lib -L/usr/local/lib -Wl,-R/usr/local/lib -Wl,-R/usr/local/lib -L/usr/local/lib  -Wl,-R -Wl,/usr/local/lib -L/usr/local/lib -lruby18 -lsocket -lnsl  -lssl -lcrypto -lsocket -lnsl -ldl   -lpthread -ldl -lcrypt -lm -lm -lpthread -lrt -ldb4  -lc
sh: shared: not found

So some googling later... I just executed this before running gem update:

export CXX=g++

It now gets a lot further... Next run ran out of memory?! The one after that segfaulted! (No, really!) The third run ran to a successful completion. Sheesh.

RubyGems seems to be in the same state of fragility that fink was in several years ago. There are just too many exceptions and funky, weird configurations one has to do to get it to work.

I had hoped that by being a late adopter, I would miss out on all this chaos. I guess not.

Labels: ruby

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Installing MySQL gem on Leopard

Ordinarily, installing a gem on Mac OS X is as simple as

sudo gem install foo.

However, a little extra magic is required to install the mysql gem:

sudo gem install mysql -- --with-mysql-config=/usr/local/mysql/bin/mysql_config

I found this reference to back me up.

Labels: macos, ruby

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Front end to FMP

I need to build a Q&D front end for a FileMaker database. While the Server version of FileMaker ships with some PHP glue, I decided to go with a more familiar environment. Python! It's a nice language. I have some familiarity with it, and (most important of all) it works on the ISP's server.

I did a quick survey of some lightweight Python frameworks, and settled on TurboGears (with CherryPy) for the app itself. For the interface to FileMaker, I found PyFileMaker.

Ready to go! So, to begin with, I did a little spiking to kick the tires of PyFileMaker. Right out the gate, the results were disappointing. The code choked on my password! (Some regex seemed to believe that my password shouldn't contain special characters.) Not a problem: I created a special account for PyFileMaker (not a bad idea anyway for production) and got one teensy step further. I hit our FMP Server and asked for a list of databases. Kapow! Now PyFileMaker complained that one of the db names "contain unsupported characters." Pity it doesn't deign to tell me which one...

Well!

Foreseeing a life of misery and pain, I looked for a Ruby solution. A quick trip to the ISP... Whew! Ruby works there too. Anyway, it's high time I learned Ruby, so next stop, Rfm The visit to the six.fried.rice site was a breath of fresh air. I know from previous googling journeys that they seem to know what they're talking about. Best of all, they have a RoR sample app that talks to a FMP db, so I can start with that.

Into the world of Ruby!

Labels: filemaker, python, ruby

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