I’m trying to learn about the Ruby language’s source code, so I tried installing it from source. I figured this would be safe to do, since I’m using RBENV to manage my Ruby version and typing which ruby results in /Users/richiethomas/.rbenv/shims/ruby, so I figured that RBENV’s version of Ruby would still be first in my $PATH and any faulty installation of Ruby from source would have no effect.

Following the instructions here, I pulled down the code from Github and ran ./autogen.sh. I verified that the configure file had been created by autogen.sh, and then I ran ./configure. The output of this script was:

Configuration summary for ruby version 3.4.0

   * Installation prefix: /usr/local
   * exec prefix:         ${prefix}
   * arch:                arm64-darwin23
   * site arch:           ${arch}
   * RUBY_BASE_NAME:      ruby
   * ruby lib prefix:     ${libdir}/${RUBY_BASE_NAME}
   * site libraries path: ${rubylibprefix}/${sitearch}
   * vendor path:         ${rubylibprefix}/vendor_ruby
   * target OS:           darwin23
   * compiler:            clang
   * with thread:         pthread
   * with coroutine:      arm64
   * with shared GC:      no
   * enable shared libs:  no
   * dynamic library ext: bundle
   * CFLAGS:              -fdeclspec ${optflags} ${debugflags} ${warnflags}
   * LDFLAGS:             -L. -fstack-protector-strong
   * DLDFLAGS:            -Wl,-undefined,dynamic_lookup
   * optflags:            -O3 -fno-fast-math
   * debugflags:          -ggdb3
   * warnflags:           -Wall -Wextra -Wextra-tokens 
                          -Wdeprecated-declarations -Wdivision-by-zero 
                          -Wdiv-by-zero -Wimplicit-function-declaration 
                          -Wimplicit-int -Wpointer-arith -Wshorten-64-to-32 
                          -Wwrite-strings -Wold-style-definition 
                          -Wmissing-noreturn -Wno-cast-function-type 
                          -Wno-constant-logical-operand -Wno-long-long 
                          -Wno-missing-field-initializers 
                          -Wno-overlength-strings -Wno-parentheses-equality 
                          -Wno-self-assign -Wno-tautological-compare 
                          -Wno-unused-parameter -Wno-unused-value 
                          -Wunused-variable -Wmisleading-indentation -Wundef
   * strip command:       strip -A -n
   * install doc:         rdoc
   * YJIT support:        no
   * RJIT support:        yes
   * man page type:       doc

---

Lastly, I verified that the Makefile was created, and ran make. I saw an error at the bottom of this output:

    BASERUBY = ./tool/missing-baseruby.bat
    CC = clang
    LD = ld
    LDSHARED = clang -dynamiclib
    CFLAGS = -fdeclspec -O3 -fno-fast-math -ggdb3 -Wall -Wextra -Wextra-tokens -Wdeprecated-declarations -Wdivision-by-zero -Wdiv-by-zero -Wimplicit-function-declaration -Wimplicit-int -Wpointer-arith -Wshorten-64-to-32 -Wwrite-strings -Wold-style-definition -Wmissing-noreturn -Wno-cast-function-type -Wno-constant-logical-operand -Wno-long-long -Wno-missing-field-initializers -Wno-overlength-strings -Wno-parentheses-equality -Wno-self-assign -Wno-tautological-compare -Wno-unused-parameter -Wno-unused-value -Wunused-variable -Wmisleading-indentation -Wundef  -pipe -arch arm64
    XCFLAGS = -U_FORTIFY_SOURCE -D_FORTIFY_SOURCE=2 -fstack-protector-strong -fno-strict-overflow -fvisibility=hidden -DRUBY_EXPORT -fPIE -I. -I.ext/include/arm64-darwin23 -I./include -I. -I./prism -I./enc/unicode/15.0.0  
    CPPFLAGS = -D_XOPEN_SOURCE -D_DARWIN_C_SOURCE -D_DARWIN_UNLIMITED_SELECT -D_REENTRANT   
    DLDFLAGS = -Wl,-undefined,dynamic_lookup -fstack-protector-strong -Wl,-pie -framework CoreFoundation  -arch arm64
    SOLIBS = -ldl -lobjc -lpthread 
    LANG = en_US.UTF-8
    LC_ALL = 
    LC_CTYPE = 
    MFLAGS = 
    RUSTC = no
    YJIT_RUSTC_ARGS = --crate-name=yjit --crate-type=staticlib --edition=2021 -g -C lto=thin -C opt-level=3 -C overflow-checks=on '--out-dir=/Users/richiethomas/Desktop/Workspace/RubySource/ruby/yjit/target/release/' ./yjit/src/lib.rs
Apple clang version 15.0.0 (clang-1500.0.40.1)
Target: arm64-apple-darwin23.1.0
Thread model: posix
InstalledDir: /Library/Developer/CommandLineTools/usr/bin
compiling ./main.c
compiling dmydln.c
generating id.h
executable host ruby is required.  use --with-baseruby option.
Note that BASERUBY must be Ruby 3.0.0 or later.
make: *** [id.h] Error 1

Wanting to see if I could run Ruby, I typed irb in my terminal, but saw the following:

$ irb

zsh: killed     irb

Now wanting to undo what I had done, I tried running make clean and saw the following:

$ make clean
cleaning rdoc
cleaning HTML
cleaning capi

However, when I re-ran irb, I continued to see the same zsh: killed irb error. I also tried running irb in a Bash terminal, but saw a Killed: 9 error. I also see this error when I open a new terminal window, and also when I navigate to a new directory.

I’m currently unable to run Ruby on my machine, which is a big problem. Where did I go wrong here, and how do I fix the issue?