Question

I’m having trouble setting up ruby on rails on my machine. I’ve been following the book “Agile Web Development with Rails” and up until now everything has been going fine.

The problem I’m having is that when I type

rails server

I get the following error:

/home/myname/.gem/ruby/1.9.1/gems/execjs-1.3.0/lib/execjs/runtimes.rb:50:in `autodetect': Could not find a JavaScript runtime. See https://github.com/sstephenson/execjs for a list of available runtimes. (ExecJS::RuntimeUnavailable)
from /home/myname/.gem/ruby/1.9.1/gems/execjs-1.3.0/lib/execjs.rb:5:in `<module:ExecJS>'
from /home/myname/.gem/ruby/1.9.1/gems/execjs-1.3.0/lib/execjs.rb:4:in `<top (required)>'
from /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.9.1/gems/coffee-script-2.2.0/lib/coffee_script.rb:1:in `require'
from /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.9.1/gems/coffee-script-2.2.0/lib/coffee_script.rb:1:in `<top (required)>'
from /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.9.1/gems/coffee-script-2.2.0/lib/coffee-script.rb:1:in `require'
from /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.9.1/gems/coffee-script-2.2.0/lib/coffee-script.rb:1:in `<top (required)>'
from /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.9.1/gems/coffee-rails-3.2.2/lib/coffee-rails.rb:1:in `require'
from /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.9.1/gems/coffee-rails-3.2.2/lib/coffee-rails.rb:1:in `<top (required)>'
from /home/myname/.gem/ruby/1.9.1/gems/bundler-1.1.0/lib/bundler/runtime.rb:68:in `require'
from /home/myname/.gem/ruby/1.9.1/gems/bundler-1.1.0/lib/bundler/runtime.rb:68:in `block (2 levels) in require'
from /home/myname/.gem/ruby/1.9.1/gems/bundler-1.1.0/lib/bundler/runtime.rb:66:in `each'
from /home/myname/.gem/ruby/1.9.1/gems/bundler-1.1.0/lib/bundler/runtime.rb:66:in `block in require'
from /home/myname/.gem/ruby/1.9.1/gems/bundler-1.1.0/lib/bundler/runtime.rb:55:in `each'
from /home/myname/.gem/ruby/1.9.1/gems/bundler-1.1.0/lib/bundler/runtime.rb:55:in `require'
from /home/myname/.gem/ruby/1.9.1/gems/bundler-1.1.0/lib/bundler.rb:118:in `require'
from /home/myname/Programming/Learning/Learning_Rails/demo/config/application.rb:7:in `<top (required)>'
from /home/myname/.gem/ruby/1.9.1/gems/railties-3.2.2/lib/rails/commands.rb:53:in `require'
from /home/myname/.gem/ruby/1.9.1/gems/railties-3.2.2/lib/rails/commands.rb:53:in `block in <top (required)>'
from /home/myname/.gem/ruby/1.9.1/gems/railties-3.2.2/lib/rails/commands.rb:50:in `tap'
from /home/myname/.gem/ruby/1.9.1/gems/railties-3.2.2/lib/rails/commands.rb:50:in `<top (required)>'
from script/rails:6:in `require'
from script/rails:6:in `<main>'

It’s saying that it can’t find a javascript runtime environment. I went to the website that the error message recommended and I did some googling and I read that execjs would be a good choice to install. I installed execjs with the following commands:

sudo gem install execjs
sudo gem update

When I run ‘gem list’ I get the following output:

*** LOCAL GEMS ***

actionmailer (3.2.2)
actionpack (3.2.2)
activemodel (3.2.2)
activerecord (3.2.2)
activeresource (3.2.2)
activesupport (3.2.2)
arel (3.0.2)
bigdecimal (1.1.0)
builder (3.0.0)
bundler (1.1.0)
coffee-rails (3.2.2)
coffee-script (2.2.0)
coffee-script-source (1.2.0)
erubis (2.7.0)
execjs (1.3.0 ruby)
hike (1.2.1)
i18n (0.6.0)
io-console (0.3)
journey (1.0.3)
jquery-rails (2.0.1)
json (1.6.5, 1.5.4)
mail (2.4.3)
mime-types (1.17.2)
minitest (2.11.3, 2.5.1)
multi_json (1.1.0)
polyglot (0.3.3)
rack (1.4.1)
rack-cache (1.2)
rack-ssl (1.3.2)
rack-test (0.6.1)
rails (3.2.2)
railties (3.2.2)
rake (0.9.2.2)
rdoc (3.12, 3.9.4)
sass (3.1.15)
sass-rails (3.2.4)
sprockets (2.3.1, 2.1.2)
sqlite3 (1.3.5)
thor (0.14.6)
tilt (1.3.3)
treetop (1.4.10)
tzinfo (0.3.32)
uglifier (1.2.3)

From the output above it looks to me like execjs is installed. What’s going on here and why am I getting this error?

If it’s helpful at all,

My OS is Arch Linux.

ruby -v: ruby 1.9.3p125 (2012-02-16 revision 34643) [x86_64-linux]

rails -v: Rails 3.2.2

Any help would be appreciated.

Answer 1

Your Gemfile should contain BOTH of the following lines:

gem 'execjs'
gem 'therubyracer'

Then run bundle install and try again.