Question

I recently installed jgem and jruby on Mac OS X 10.6.4 with macports. Now both of them generate the notorious ‘Trace/BPT trap’ error when I try to run them.

For example, from the command line:

$ jgem --version
Trace/BPT trap
$ jruby --version
jruby 1.5.2 (ruby 1.8.7 patchlevel 249) (2010-11-03 6586) (Java HotSpot(TM) Client VM  1.6.0_03-p3) [i386-java]
Trace/BPT trap

This is not the first version of either of these programs I have installed on this machine, so I am curious if perhaps some old version of either java or ruby is to blame. I’m not familiar enough with jgem or jruby internals to know if that is even a reasonable guess.

Here are my ruby and java versions:

$ java -version
java version "1.6.0_03-p3"
$ ruby --version
ruby 1.8.7 (2010-08-16 patchlevel 302) [i686-darwin10]

Any insight is much appreciated. Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

Just figured out my problem!

The version of java was to blame. It was out-of-date and also for Mac OS X 10.5, from which I have recently upgraded. To solve this problem, here’s what I did:

1. Download and install the most recent version of the jdk for Mac OS X 10.6 here.
2. The newly installed java bin folder is at /System/Library/Frameworks/JavaVM.framework/Versions/1.6/Home/bin. Add this to the front of your $PATH in your profile file.
3. Restart terminal or source the profile file.
4. Type which java in terminal. The output should be the java installation path above with a /java at the very end.
5. Type jruby --version. If jruby is now working, it should output something pleasant like jruby 1.5.2 (ruby 1.8.7 patchlevel 249) (2010-11-09 6586) (Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM 1.6.0_22) [x86_64-java]
6. Now you’re done. Hurray for simple problems!