How to install jekyll?

Solution 1:

On my 13.04 and 14.04 systems, things worked for me after installing the ruby-dev package, then running the gem install:

• sudo apt-get install ruby1.9.1-dev (or try: ruby-dev instead)

• gem install jekyll # if this fails then sudo gem install jekyll

After that, jekyll was installed correctly.

Note that for the gem install instruction, it is better not to use sudo.*****

It's better to use something like RVM, so that sudo isn't required. On some systems it may be necessary to use sudo, if for instance permissions were set by previous sudo commands or root-level configuration.

See this stackoverflow question -- how to install gems without sudo for more information and for help on getting permissions set to user instead of root.

***** Credit to @iguarav for this best practices advice as well as the link to rvm.io.

Solution 2:

Guide for 14.04 LTS without RVM

Jekyll 3 needs ruby 2.0 or higher, so we first install ruby 2.0, it's development headers and nodejs:

sudo apt-get install -y ruby2.0 ruby2.0-dev nodejs

Then we point the commands included in the ruby package to the new version.

sudo update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/ruby ruby /usr/bin/ruby2.0 10
sudo update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/gem gem /usr/bin/gem2.0 10
sudo update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/irb irb /usr/bin/irb2.0 10
sudo update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/rdoc rdoc /usr/bin/rdoc2.0 10
sudo update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/testrb testrb /usr/bin/testrb2.0 10
sudo update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/rake rake /usr/bin/rake2.0 10
sudo update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/erb erb /usr/bin/erb2.0 10
sudo update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/ri ri /usr/bin/ri2.0 10

And finally we use gem to install the jekyll gem.

sudo gem install jekyll

Solution 3:

Also, you don't want to depend on sudo for executing gems, so I recommend to add your user to the root's group and:

sudo chmod -R 770 /var/lib/gems
sudo chmod -R 770 /usr/local/bin

Just doing a few updates on this thread. According the jekyll's installation docs the version needed is version 2. After fixing the permissions issue, I ran into that expected error:

ERROR:  Error installing jekyll:
jekyll requires Ruby version >= 2.0.0.

Installing with RVM:

gpg --keyserver hkp://keys.gnupg.net --recv-keys \  409B6B1796C275462A1703113804BB82D39DC0E3
curl -sSL https://get.rvm.io | bash -s stable --ruby             
/bin/bash --login
rvm install 2.3.0
rvm use 2.3.0
rvm rubygems latest
ruby --version
rvm install ruby-dev

For other issues with the Ruby installation, follow this.

After that, it worked for me.