Difficulties with Ruby version for Rails and activesupport-3.2.12

Question

I have a rails application which works built on my test environment.

ruby -v  => 1.9.3p194    
rails -v => 3.2.12    
gem -v   => 1.8.23

On the server I wish to deploy to, the outputs are the following:

ruby -v  => 1.9.3p0
rails -v => 3.2.12
gem -v   => 1.8.15

I've started with a fresh installation of the server but I cannot get the server version of ruby and gem to match.

Additionally when I run rails s on the server (just to test) this is the failed output:

rails s
=> Booting WEBrick
=> Rails 3.2.12 application starting in development on http://0.0.0.0:3000
=> Call with -d to detach
=> Ctrl-C to shutdown server
Exiting
/var/lib/gems/1.8/gems/activesupport-3.2.12/lib/active_support/dependencies.rb:245:in `load': /var/www/New/confed ':', expecting kEND (SyntaxError)
  match '/about',   to: 'static_pages#about'
                       ^
/var/www/New/config/routes.rb:6: syntax error, unexpected ':', expecting kEND
  match '/cv',          to: 'static_pages#cv'
                           ^
        from /var/lib/gems/1.8/gems/activesupport-3.2.12/lib/active_support/dependencies.rb:245:in `load'
        from /var/lib/gems/1.8/gems/activesupport-3.2.12/lib/active_support/dependencies.rb:236:in `load_dependency'
        from /var/lib/gems/1.8/gems/activesupport-3.2.12/lib/active_support/dependencies.rb:245:in `load'
        from /var/lib/gems/1.8/gems/railties-3.2.12/lib/rails/application/routes_reloader.rb:40:in `load_paths'
        from /var/lib/gems/1.8/gems/railties-3.2.12/lib/rails/application/routes_reloader.rb:40:in `each'
        from /var/lib/gems/1.8/gems/railties-3.2.12/lib/rails/application/routes_reloader.rb:40:in `load_paths'
        from /var/lib/gems/1.8/gems/railties-3.2.12/lib/rails/application/routes_reloader.rb:16:in `reload!'
        from /var/lib/gems/1.8/gems/railties-3.2.12/lib/rails/application/routes_reloader.rb:26:in `updater'
        from /var/lib/gems/1.8/gems/activesupport-3.2.12/lib/active_support/file_update_checker.rb:78:in `call'
        from /var/lib/gems/1.8/gems/activesupport-3.2.12/lib/active_support/file_update_checker.rb:78:in `execute'
        from /var/lib/gems/1.8/gems/railties-3.2.12/lib/rails/application/routes_reloader.rb:27:in `updater'
        from /var/lib/gems/1.8/gems/railties-3.2.12/lib/rails/application/routes_reloader.rb:7:in `execute_if_updated'
        from /var/lib/gems/1.8/gems/railties-3.2.12/lib/rails/application/finisher.rb:66
        from /var/lib/gems/1.8/gems/railties-3.2.12/lib/rails/initializable.rb:30:in `instance_exec'
        from /var/lib/gems/1.8/gems/railties-3.2.12/lib/rails/initializable.rb:30:in `run'
        from /var/lib/gems/1.8/gems/railties-3.2.12/lib/rails/initializable.rb:55:in `run_initializers'
        from /var/lib/gems/1.8/gems/railties-3.2.12/lib/rails/initializable.rb:54:in `each'
        from /var/lib/gems/1.8/gems/railties-3.2.12/lib/rails/initializable.rb:54:in `run_initializers'
        from /var/lib/gems/1.8/gems/railties-3.2.12/lib/rails/application.rb:136:in `initialize!'
        from /var/lib/gems/1.8/gems/railties-3.2.12/lib/rails/railtie/configurable.rb:30:in `send'
        from /var/lib/gems/1.8/gems/railties-3.2.12/lib/rails/railtie/configurable.rb:30:in `method_missing'
        from /var/www/New/config/environment.rb:5
        from /var/www/New/config.ru:3:in `require'
        from /var/www/New/config.ru:3
        from /var/lib/gems/1.8/gems/rack-1.4.5/lib/rack/builder.rb:51:in `instance_eval'
        from /var/lib/gems/1.8/gems/rack-1.4.5/lib/rack/builder.rb:51:in `initialize'
        from /var/www/New/config.ru:0:in `new'
        from /var/www/New/config.ru:0

I've looked on my test system and I don't have /var/lib/gems/1.8 I only have /var/lib/gems/1.9.1

Answer 1

From your stack trace, it actually looks like you're running against Ruby 1.8, which doesn't support the simplified hash syntax symbol: value whereas 1.8 only had :symbol => value .

You can use rvm or rbenv to manage multiple ruby versions. rbenv imo is the better of the two when working with Rails.

---

Answering Ryan's question of why I think rbenv > rvm is based on personal feelings. I've found rbenv easy to work with, easy to understand and conceptualize how it was working, and I haven't run into a scenario where it has failed me. Additionally the source code is quite readable, which made my one foray for configuration easy to do.