How to install ruby 1.8.7 back on Ubuntu 14.04 after upgrade?

Question

Upgrading to 14.04 removed my ruby 1.8.7. I need it back. :) Badly. Some old projects still rely on it.

Gems seems to be left untouched.

How do I install ruby 1.8 back while still keeping Ubuntu 14.04 on my computer? Any PPA's to add? I tried compiling from source but got a bunch of errors.

Solution 1

I did this by adding the saucy (13.10) repositories back to my sources.list file.

1. sudo -H gedit /etc/apt/sources.list
2. Add deb http://gb.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ saucy main restricted after the first set.
3. Save the file and exit the editor.
4. sudo apt-get update
5. sudo apt-get install ruby1.8
6. sudo apt-get install rubygems

Probably isn't the best way, but it seemed to work for me. I had an older project with compass/sass that was failing on ruby 1.9 but now works as before.

I noticed that installing ruby 1.8 also installed a package called ruby-switch. Might be able to switch between 1.8 and 1.9 with this utility, although I haven't played with it and RVM is probably a better solution for switching ruby versions.

Solution 2

You should not use repos that are for older versions. You will run into severe maintenance problems and possibly break your system.

Use a PPA like this one:

sudo apt-get install python-software-properties
sudo apt-add-repository ppa:brightbox/ruby-ng
sudo apt-get update

EDIT: As pointed out in the comments, they don't support 14.04 just yet, but they have an experimental repository that has packages for Trusty.

Comments

[user272449]

Yes, this is what I finally came to.. more or less. Using different steps and tools but the basic idea is the same - using "saucy" repositories again.

[OCDkirby]

Note that this doesn't work for 14.04. "We provide Ruby 1.8.7 packages for Ubuntu Lucid, Precise, Quantal, Raring and Saucy."

[Eliah Kagan]

Since 13.10 is end-of-life now, I'm wondering if it may soon be necessary to use the corresponding old-releases software source for that deb line. As a totally separate matter, note that some software from saucy (or any Ubuntu version) got SRUs after 13.10's release; in that case one would use saucy-updates or saucy-security instead of saucy. As shown on this cached page, ruby1.8 did not so saucy is correct.

[tricasse]

The first command should be sudo apt-get install software-properties-common.