How to install ruby 1.9 on Dreamhost

Installing ruby 1.9 on your Dreamhost account is easy, but you probably want to maintain your old version of ruby, so you'd better add a suffix to your executables, like ruby19. You also want to install your ruby version on your home directory to avoid the use of sudo.

To install ruby 1.9 with a custom suffix do the following:

wget ftp://ftp.ruby-lang.org/pub/ruby/1.9/ruby-1.9.1-p0.tar.gz
tar -xvf ruby-1.9.1-p0.tar.gz
cd ruby-1.9.1-p0
./configure --prefix=$HOME --program-suffix=19
make
sudo make install
rm ruby-1.9.1-p0.tar.gz

The last step is to add your ~/bin directory to your load path. I added the following line to my .bash_profile:

PATH=$PATH:$HOME/bin

I've also logged out from my shell account to apply the changes. Now you can use your new ruby installation wherever you want:

$ ruby19 -v
 ruby 1.9.1p0 (2009-01-30 revision 21907) [x86_64-linux]
$ irb19 -v
 irb 0.9.5(05/04/13)