Learn how to set up your Ruby environment on the Mac
macOS comes pre-installed with Ruby 🥳, but doesn’t have Ruby’s development libraries needed to build native extensions. 😩 No problem though — there are a few tools we can use to set up a proper Ruby development environment. 😎
Our favorite, and perhaps the easiest, is using Homebrew. After installing Homebrew (see their website for details), you can install Ruby using: brew install ruby
Make sure to add Ruby to your $PATH variable, for example by running:
echo 'export PATH="/usr/local/opt/ruby/bin:$PATH"' >> ~/.bash_profile
To get access to Ruby in the current shell, run source ~/.bash_profile. Ruby should now be available for this and all new shells. Try running ruby --version to check.
Even better, if you want to switch Ruby versions on-the-fly, you can use rbenv. Install with Homebrew using brew install rbenv ruby-build
Then, add eval "$(rbenv init -)" to your ~/.bash_profile. Install a Ruby version and set it as the global default like so:
rbenv install 2.6.2
rbenv global 2.6.2
Check to make sure everything is set up by running the following (the $ symbol represents the prompt):
$ rbenv versions
system
* 2.6.2 (set by /home/<me>/.rbenv/version)
$ ruby -e "puts 'Hello Ruby'"
Hello Ruby
That’s it! Head back to the “get started” guide and write your first 2D app »