ruby-install2rpm

This is a cool little bash utility I wrote a couple years back to install isolated Ruby environments compiled from source, create a generated RPM spec file from that environment to build turned into an RPM.

Why will this help me?

Well it is true that are other utilities out there that do this sort of thing but the reason I created this project was mostly because those other utilities didn't support 'all the functionality and flexibility' in one utility. The main goal for this project was to create small isolated ruby environment that can be turned into RPMs (optional) for ease of deploying or perhaps you may find a better use for it.

I'm sharing with the public now in hopes that it will help others.

Before You Start PLEASE READ

This has only been tested on CentOS/RedHat 5.x and 6.x. These distros has always been my main platform and this script currently tries to install all the required packages for you before the build takes place but the current package names are CentOS/RedHat sytle.

NOTE: This also assumes you have local copies of the source ruby environment as well as the gems you want to install. I took this approach to limit the amount of deltas between versions.

Overview

Build an entire base ruby environment from source and create a RPM spec.

To build this new environemt, you should run this build on a build machine rather than a host that this build is to be installed on. The reason for this is because there are a lot of development packages that are needed to compile ruby that are not needed on say your production hosts. They are only required for the build portion.

Should any of the scipts fail, you 'should' be able to pick up at the exact location of where the build failed by re-running the script that failed. All scripts live in the bin/ directory.

Directory Structure

bin/ -> Contains all the binaries need to create the new build
build/ -> Contails the unpacked source tar.gz file
gems/ -> The downloaded default gems to package into the ruby environment
./ -> The root directory of this project also where you place the
source for ruby-version.tar.gz.

You download the source files for the environment you want to build and place it into root directory of the cloned repo. For example, if you cloned this into ruby-install2pm, place the SOURCE-VERSION.tar.gz into that directory.

NOTE: The source must be a tar.gz file... Sorry

HELP, How Does This Script Work And How Do I Build A New Ruby

Kind of hard to explain for all use cases but.... If you are familiar with how kickstart does OS installs, you will see familairity between this script and kickstart.

It is assumed you are already in the bin directory of this folder.

The file rubyinstall.rc should a symlink that points to an Ruby environment file that contains information on how to build your new RUBY version. When you want to build a new ruby version, you must change this symlink manually.

Each ruby-version-install.rc file is bash script that contains run time configuration info for the Ruby environment you are building. Here is an example for Ruby 1.9.3-p0

While back in the day when I created this script I originally tried to reduce the duplication in these '.rc' files there were certain situations (normally with older rubies) that I felt like it was better to just copy and paste these files rather than inherit defaults.... etc.

$ cat ruby-1.9.3-p0-install.rc 
#!/bin/bash

# The directory that we will install the built package
# this should be the root directory for the install.
export INSTALL_ROOT_DIR="/opt"

# compile options to be used
export
CONFIGURE_OPTS="--enable-shared,--enable-rpath,--disable-install-doc,--without-X11,--without-tk"

# make install options
#export MAKE_INSTALL_OPTS="DESTDIR=/some/path"

# The version of ruby
export RUBY_VER="1.9.3-p0"
export RUBY="ruby-${RUBY_VER}"
export RUBY_DIR="$INSTALL_ROOT_DIR/$RUBY"

# This is the tar file that will contain the built package
export OUTPUT_TARGZ="${RUBY}-environment.tar.gz"

# The RPM release version, make sure to increment this if you make
changes
export RPM_RELEASE_VER="1"

When this file is created it is essentially the master file that is sourced for other portions of the build process, there are many proceses this script uses to build a new version of ruby. T

NOTE: This detail below is the order in which install.sh sees the files/scripts.

bin/install.sh => Is the master script, run this script with an environment configuration as it's first argument without the .rc at the end. Example: ./install.sh rubyinstall

bin/pkg.list => This file contains a list of CentOS/RedHat/Fedora package names used to build the new version of ruby. Each package name should be on it's own line.

bin/build-ruby => The heard of the Ruby compiling: configuring, make, make install. This uses values contained in the ruby-version-install.rc run time configuration file.

eval CFLAGS='$CFLAGS' ./build-ruby --package "$RUBY" --install-dir
"$INSTALL_ROOT_DIR" --configure-opts "$CONFIGURE_OPTS"

bin/post-install-ruby => This script is in charge of installing post compile stuff like installing rubygems and other base gems like rake, bundler. For now you need to manually add the gems you want to install in this script.

bin/cleanup => Runs the clean up script to clean out anything you don't care about. Normally this is just the unpacked SOURCE in build/

eval ./cleanup "$BUILD_DIR"

bin/gen-rpmspec => Generates an RPM spec for your newly created Ruby.

eval ./gen-rpmspec "$RC" 

Steps To Build A New Ruby

To build a new ruby environment just run the following script. NOTE: Each time you run this script it will remove the old environment and there are no warning messages.

[INSTALL NOTES:]
Become root

sudo su -
cd bin
./install.sh rubyinstall<br>

NOTE: You don't need to include the '.rc' at the end (even though on disk it is runinstall.rc)

If any of the scripts fail, see if the problem can be fixed and re-run the main install.sh script to start over or if possible run the script that failed.