Nokogiri gem fails to install in OS X Mavericks

Question

Install fails showing:

checking for iconv_open() in iconv.h... no
checking for iconv_open() in -liconv... no
checking for iconv_open() in -liconv... no
checking for libiconv_open() in iconv.h... no
checking for libiconv_open() in -liconv... no
checking for libiconv_open() in -liconv... no
libiconv is missing.

However, looking at nokogiri's mkmf.log, the following errors are shown:

ld: warning: ignoring file /usr/local/Cellar/libxslt/1.1.28/lib/libxslt.dylib, **file was built for x86_64 which is not the architecture being linked (i386)**: /usr/local/Cellar/libxslt/1.1.28/lib/libxslt.dylib

ld: warning: ignoring file /usr/local/Cellar/libxml2/2.9.1/lib/libxml2.dylib, **file was built for x86_64 which is not the architecture being linked (i386)**: /usr/local/Cellar/libxml2/2.9.1/lib/libxml2.dylib

ld: warning: ignoring file /usr/local/Cellar/libiconv/1.14/lib/libiconv.dylib, **file was built for x86_64 which is not the architecture being linked (i386)**: /usr/local/Cellar/libiconv/1.14/lib/libiconv.dylib

I have xcode and it's command tools installed. My ~/.bash_profile has 64bit compiling forced by: export ARCHFLAGS="-arch x86_64"

I have libxml2, libxslt, and libiconv installed via Homebrew, and each is linked. I've tried installing all of these without the ARCHFLAG in .bash_profile.

I've also brew install apple-gcc42 and linked, as per how tos I've found.

I've tried installing nokogiri by passing paths to libxml2, libxslt, and libiconv in /usr/local/Cellar/, but the install still fails, with same errors as above.

I've wasted at least a day on this - just trying to get one Ruby gem installed. I'd really like to get back to actually developing.

Can anyone please help?

Answer 1

Setting NOKOGIRI_USE_SYSTEM_LIBRARIES=1 before actually installing the gem did the trick for me.

Summarising:

• If previously installed, uninstall the gem:
  $ gem uninstall nokogiri

• Use Homebrew to install libxml2, libxslt and libiconv if needed:
  $ brew install libxml2 libxslt libiconv

• Install the gem specifying the paths to the libraries to be linked against:
  $ NOKOGIRI_USE_SYSTEM_LIBRARIES=1 gem install nokogiri -- --use-system-libraries --with-iconv-dir="$(brew --prefix libiconv)" --with-xml2-config="$(brew --prefix libxml2)/bin/xml2-config" --with-xslt-config="$(brew --prefix libxslt)/bin/xslt-config"

Answer 2

• As a self-contained solution, I've put together this ruby script as a gist that should work with any recent Mac OS X / Homebrew installation.
• You're basically just on on relying Homebrew's libraries instead of the outdated Apple ones. Simple.
• You can configure and install with Bundler (instead of gem) by passing bundle as an argument.

Check it out, and please feel free to contribute--maybe we can boil this down to one script to fix them all!