How to get the latest ruby versions for rbenv/ruby-build

Thursday, 12 July 2012

If you’ve been using rbenv to manage your rubies for a while, most likely you’ve come across the situation where you need to install a newer build of a ruby version but it isn’t available when you run `rbenv install`. If try to install it and you get something like this:

rbenv install 1.9.3-p125 ruby-build: definition not found: 1.9.3-p125

The key to getting this list updated is updating not rbenv but ruby-build since that is what manages the installation of the rubies. Depending on whether you installed directly by cloning from the github repository or used a package manager like Homebrew (like I did), you’ll need to follow the correct steps for updating.

Updating ruby-build using Homebrew

Updating ruby-build with Homebrew is as simple as running the install command again and forcing it to link the newly built binaries.

brew install ruby-build brew link -f ruby-build

Updating ruby-build using git

To update ruby-build from the github repository, you’ll simply need to pull the newest version and run the install script.

cd ~/.rbenv/plugins/ruby-build git pull

That’s it! Now when you run the `rbenv install` command, you’ll have access to the latest builds of ruby.