Cannot install rails version 4.2.5 on Ubuntu in WSL when I have ruby 2.2.1 active. nokogiri requires Ruby version >= 2.3.0

Question

Trying to install rails version 4.2.5 on Ubuntu in Windows Subsystem for Linux on Windows 10 when I have ruby 2.2.1 installed and active I get the following error:

~$ gem install rails -v 4.2.5
ERROR:  Error installing rails:
        nokogiri requires Ruby version >= 2.3.0.

I need these versions to collaborate on a project which uses these versions.

I started by installing WSL (1 not 2) on windows 10, then downloaded and installed Ubuntu Linux. Then I installed rbenv , updated dependencies, installed ruby 2.5.1 which was fairly easy. I had problems installing ruby 2.2.1 but got there after doing

$ sudo apt-get install -y libssl1.0-dev

to install an earlier version of libssl which ruby 2.2.1 needs.

I installed node.js and an earlier version of bundler using

$ gem install bundler -v 1.17.3

as trying

$ gem install bundler 

failed with a similar error.

(I also installed ruby 2.5.1 and rails 4.2.5 on top of it with few problems)

Trying various diagnostics showed rails was not installed for ruby 2.2.1

~$ rails
rbenv: rails: command not found
The `rails' command exists in these Ruby versions:
  2.5.1

(but not in ruby 2.2.1, which is where I need it)

Looking at my files in windows File Explorer (only looking) I can see that while my ruby 2.5.1 gems include rails my ruby 2.2.1 files are incomplete and do not include rails.

I think the PATH is correct.

$ echo $PATH returns
/home/johnloughran/.rbenv/plugins/ruby-  build/bin:/home/johnloughran/.rbenv/shims:/home/johnloughran/.rbenv/bin:/usr/ 
local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games:/usr/local 
/games:/mnt/c/Program 
Files/WindowsApps/CanonicalGroupLimited.Ubuntu18.04onWindows_1804.2019.522.0_ 
x64__79rhkp1fndgsc:  ........   :/snap/bin

I modified my .bashrc file to add various entries to the PATH which have been included above.

I repeated the whole process twice starting from scratch (uninstalling Ubuntu) with the same block at the end.

What is my best option here to try and continue?

Answer 1

Thanks Josien for your comments. In the first case my collaborators have these versions of Ruby and Rails working together, but its a few years now since they installed them. One, David, helped me by trying a fresh install of rails 4.2.5 on ruby 2.2.1 which ran into the same problem above with nokogiri.

He solved it by installing a lower version of nokogiri in a new test directory, which I repeated as:

test$ gem install nokogiri -v 1.9.1

This worked. Then I installed rails as

test$ gem install rails --version 4.2.5

At last .... it worked!!!! :-) To prove it I was able to get rails to return its version correctly.

test$ rails -v
Rails 4.2.5

Then I was able to create an app as

<working-directory>$ rails new learn-ruby

which works, almost, having hit another dependency problem, but hey ... that's programming!

Re your second comment I do not know enough about this stuff to know how relevant it is that this version of ruby is deprecated and the rails version is getting there too.