Ruby Make Problem

Still in my early days using Linux and trying to compile ruby 1.9 on my machine in order to move my working environment to Linux

I downloaded ruby 1.9 source from ftp.ruby-lang.org and as stated in readMe file, i ran

./configure --prefix={{any-desired-path}}

successfully then ran

make

it took some time then i was faced with that error

executable host ruby is required. use --with-baseruby option.

What is that error? and what ruby?? i am compiling ruby how come i need it.


Anyway, i began searching for an explanation. i reached to a comment in one of the forums stating that this error can occur in these two cases

1. ruby isn't in the default path
2. ruby isn't installed

More investigation showed that i should have any previous version of ruby installed in order to use it with that make file as follows

./configure --prefix={{any-desired-path}} --with_baseruby={{full-path-to-ruby-executable}}

then run make command once again. And it worked finally

What a nice recursive world, "ruby is needed to compile ruby"