ERROR: Failed to build gem native extension when installing rails

Question

I'm on windows and trying to install rails. but I get the following error message:

Z:\AlexL\My Documents\rails>gem install rails
Temporarily enhancing PATH to include DevKit...
Building native extensions.  This could take a while...
ERROR:  Error installing rails:
        ERROR: Failed to build gem native extension.

    C:/Ruby193/bin/ruby.exe -r ./siteconf20150211-3312-5ie7vd.rb extconf.rb
creating Makefile

make  clean
Makefile:165: *** target pattern contains no `%'.  Stop.

make
Makefile:165: *** target pattern contains no `%'.  Stop.

make failed, exit code 2

Gem files will remain installed in C:/Ruby193/lib/ruby/gems/1.9.1/gems/json-1.8.
2 for inspection.
Results logged to C:/Ruby193/lib/ruby/gems/1.9.1/extensions/x86-mingw32/1.9.1/js
on-1.8.2/gem_make.out

Ruby version is: ruby 1.9.3p484

I've got this devkit installed DevKit-tdm-32-4.5.2-20111229-1559-sfx in this folder:

C:\\Ruby193\\DevKit\\

Not sure what else is wrong?

Answer 1

Looks the same as the issue being discussed here .

Apparently, there is a problem with Ruby 1.9.3 and newer RubyGems versions on Windows machines. Their quick-fix solution was to downgrade to an earlier version of RubyGems.

gem update --system 1.8.29

Once you have done that, confirm that gems -v returns 1.8.29 and try your command again.

Otherwise, you can upgrade to Ruby 2.X, which should also resolve this problem.