Problem installing Ruby 1.9.2 using RVM on Mac OS X Snow Leopard

Question

I just started learning Ruby and was trying to install the latest version using RVM on a Macbook Air and it keeps failing. I must be doing something wrong since i don't see anyone else complaining about this exact error during Ruby installation after having done extensive searching online.

Steps taken:

Dima$ rvm install ruby-1.9.2-p290
Installing Ruby from source to: /Users/Dima/.rvm/rubies/ruby-1.9.2-p290, this may take a while depending on your cpu(s)...

ruby-1.9.2-p290 - #fetching 
ruby-1.9.2-p290 - #extracted to /Users/Dima/.rvm/src/ruby-1.9.2-p290 (already extracted)
Fetching yaml-0.1.4.tar.gz to /Users/Dima/.rvm/archives
Extracting yaml-0.1.4.tar.gz to /Users/Dima/.rvm/src
Configuring yaml in /Users/Dima/.rvm/src/yaml-0.1.4.
Compiling yaml in /Users/Dima/.rvm/src/yaml-0.1.4.
Installing yaml to /Users/Dima/.rvm/usr
ruby-1.9.2-p290 - #configuring 
ruby-1.9.2-p290 - #compiling 
ERROR: Error running 'make ', please read /Users/Dima/.rvm/log/ruby-1.9.2-p290/make.log
ERROR: There has been an error while running make. Halting the installation.

After this, as the error message suggested, i went and looked in the make.log file:

compiling fiddle
/usr/bin/gcc-4.2 -I. -I../../.ext/include/x86_64-darwin10.7.0 -I../.././include -I../.././ext/fiddle -DRUBY_EXTCONF_H=\"extconf.h\" -D_XOPEN_SOURCE -D_DARWIN_C_SOURCE   -fno-common -O3 -ggdb -Wextra -Wno-unused-parameter -Wno-parentheses -Wpointer-arith -Wwrite-strings -Wno-missing-field-initializers -Wshorten-64-to-32 -Wno-long-long  -fno-common -pipe  -o closure.o -c closure.c
In file included from closure.c:1:
./fiddle.h:18:17: error: ffi.h: No such file or directory
In file included from ./fiddle.h:71,
                 from closure.c:1:
./conversions.h:24: error: expected ‘=’, ‘,’, ‘;’, ‘asm’ or ‘__attribute__’ before ‘*’ token
closure.c:7: error: expected specifier-qualifier-list before ‘ffi_closure’
closure.c: In function ‘dealloc’:
closure.c:22: error: ‘fiddle_closure’ has no member named ‘pcl’
closure.c:26: error: ‘fiddle_closure’ has no member named ‘cif’
closure.c:27: error: ‘fiddle_closure’ has no member named ‘argv’
closure.c:27: error: ‘fiddle_closure’ has no member named ‘argv’
closure.c: In function ‘closure_memsize’:
closure.c:40: error: ‘fiddle_closure’ has no member named ‘cif’
closure.c:42: error: ‘fiddle_closure’ has no member named ‘argv’
closure.c:43: error: ‘ffi_closure’ undeclared (first use in this function)
closure.c:43: error: (Each undeclared identifier is reported only once
closure.c:43: error: for each function it appears in.)
closure.c: At top level:
closure.c:54: error: expected ‘)’ before ‘*’ token
closure.c: In function ‘allocate’:
closure.c:146: error: ‘fiddle_closure’ has no member named ‘pcl’
closure.c:146: error: ‘ffi_closure’ undeclared (first use in this function)
closure.c:151: error: ‘fiddle_closure’ has no member named ‘cif’
closure.c:151: error: ‘ffi_cif’ undeclared (first use in this function)
closure.c: In function ‘initialize’:
closure.c:163: error: ‘ffi_cif’ undeclared (first use in this function)
closure.c:163: error: ‘cif’ undeclared (first use in this function)
closure.c:164: error: ‘ffi_closure’ undeclared (first use in this function)
closure.c:164: error: ‘pcl’ undeclared (first use in this function)
closure.c:165: error: ‘ffi_status’ undeclared (first use in this function)
closure.c:165: error: expected ‘;’ before ‘result’
closure.c:169: error: ‘FFI_DEFAULT_ABI’ undeclared (first use in this function)
closure.c:177: error: ‘fiddle_closure’ has no member named ‘argv’
closure.c:177: error: ‘ffi_type’ undeclared (first use in this function)
closure.c:177: error: expected expression before ‘)’ token
closure.c:181: error: ‘fiddle_closure’ has no member named ‘argv’
closure.c:183: error: ‘fiddle_closure’ has no member named ‘argv’
closure.c:188: error: ‘fiddle_closure’ has no member named ‘cif’
closure.c:189: error: ‘fiddle_closure’ has no member named ‘pcl’
closure.c:191: error: ‘result’ undeclared (first use in this function)
closure.c:193: error: ‘fiddle_closure’ has no member named ‘argv’
closure.c:195: error: ‘FFI_OK’ undeclared (first use in this function)
closure.c:199: error: ‘callback’ undeclared (first use in this function)
make[1]: *** [closure.o] Error 1
make: *** [mkmain.sh] Error 1

I am not sure how to exactly decipher this, my initial instinct would be to say I don't have FFI installed, but i never saw this requirement in any of the intallation steps for Ruby. Is this something specific to my computer?

Any help from someone experienced with this would be greatly appreciated. Apologies ahead of time for any missing pieces in the post, since I'm not entirely sure how to trouble shoot this. Please let me know what additional information would be helpful to trouble shoot and I'll add it to the post.

Thanks

Answer 1

After hours of frustration I ended up loading Mac OS X Lion and Xcode 4 on my Macbook Air, then tried running rvm install ruby-1.9.2-p290 again and it worked without a problem.

Answer 2

Thoughtbot put out a great guide to getting rails setup on a new OSX install. Definitely check it out as it will probably help you out:

http://robots.thoughtbot.com/post/8700977975/2011-rubyists-guide-to-a-mac-os-x-development

Answer 3

When I started with some rails programming on my macbook pro, I got some errors when installing ruby with rvm. Don't remember the errors I got, but I had to installed xcode and then i could install ruby with rvm.