ruby 3.3.7 on Arch x86_64 fails to build "external command failed with status 2" (ruby-erb missing)

[njalooo]

Hey,
I installed: pacman -S --needed base-devel rust libffi libyaml openssl zlib
pacman -S ruby-build rbenv

Using rbenv install 3.3.7, it fails with:

touch yjit/target/release/libyjit.a
external command failed with status 2

BUILD FAILED (Arch rolling on x86_64 using ruby-build 20250121)

Full logs:
ruby-build.20250402214439.66542.log

I hope someone can help me out.

[mislav]

Hi, from your full build log, this is the actual error:

generating encdb.h
./tool/generic_erb.rb:6:in `require': cannot load such file -- erb (LoadError)
  from ./tool/generic_erb.rb:6:in `<main>' 
make: *** [uncommon.mk:1261: encdb.h] Error 1

Now, I don't know why "erb" failed to load, but let's first find out where this is coming from. My hunch is that your system Ruby (the version of Ruby you had installed on your system before even compiling Ruby 3.3.7) is having problems with erb? You can check by scanning your log for BASERUBY:

   * BASERUBY -v:         ruby 3.3.5 (2024-09-03 revision ef084cc8f4) \
                          [x86_64-linux]

BASERUBY = /usr/bin/ruby --disable=gems

Okay, so it looks like you have Ruby 3.3.5 in /usr/bin/ruby. You can try invoking it to see if loading erb works:

# this executes an empty program with Ruby, trying to require "erb" in the process
/usr/bin/ruby --disable=gems -r erb -e 0

If you get the same error, then your /usr/bin/ruby is busted and you should investigate that first before trying to compile another Ruby version. Good luck, and don't forget to share here what you find!

[njalooo]

Thanks, it appears that on Arch an additional package pacman -S ruby-erb is needed.
I installed it, and the build was successful.
I suggest updating https://github.com/rbenv/ruby-build/wiki#arch-linux.