I use jekyll for static site generation. Its latest version requires minimum ruby 2.4.0 as of now. But Debian 9.11 (stretch) has ruby 2.3.3 in its repositories, at the time of writing.

$ ruby -v
ruby 2.3.3p222 (2016-11-21) [x86_64-linux-gnu]

Although next release of Debian (buster) has ruby 2.5.1 it has not been backported to stretch by now.

So I decided to use rvm to get latest versions of ruby.

RVM is a command-line tool which allows you to easily install, manage, and work with multiple ruby environments ..

When you try to install rvm, it gives an error about its dependencies and there are unmet dependencies.

$ sudo apt install curl g++ gcc autoconf automake bison libc6-dev libffi-dev libgdbm-dev libncurses5-dev libsqlite3-dev libtool libyaml-dev make pkg-config sqlite3 zlib1g-dev libgmp-dev libreadline-dev libssl-dev
...
...
The following packages have unmet dependencies:
 libsqlite3-dev : Depends: libsqlite3-0 (= 3.16.2-5+deb9u1) but 3.27.2-3~bpo9+1 is to be installed
 sqlite3 : Depends: libsqlite3-0 (= 3.16.2-5+deb9u1) but 3.27.2-3~bpo9+1 is to be installed
E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages.

Above, we try to install the dependencies required for the RVM utility to build Ruby from source. The problem here is that, my Debian installation has both stretch and stretch-backports defined in its package repositories and latest version of libsqlite3-0 is active which came from stretch-backports.

Normally it’s the desired situation when you use backports repository, but in rvm case it makes problem. I don’t guess rvm won’t work with 3.27.2-3~bpo9+1. It’s probably because of a static definition about Debian package requirement which ignores stretch-backports. For example, when you’re on Debian 9.x (stretch) libsqlite3-0 required version should be 3.16.2-5+deb9u1. There may be a statement like this.

$ apt-cache policy libsqlite3-0
libsqlite3-0:
  Installed: 3.27.2-3~bpo9+1
  Candidate: 3.27.2-3~bpo9+1
  Version table:
 *** 3.27.2-3~bpo9+1 100
        100 http://ftp.debian.org/debian stretch-backports/main amd64 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
     3.16.2-5+deb9u1 500
        500 http://ftp.debian.org/debian stretch/main amd64 Packages

You can continue to install rvm without its dependencies ..

$ gpg --keyserver hkp://keys.gnupg.net --recv-keys 409B6B1796C275462A1703113804BB82D39DC0E3 7D2BAF1CF37B13E2069D6956105BD0E739499BDB
...
gpg: Total number processed: 2
gpg:               imported: 2
$ curl -sSL https://get.rvm.io | bash -s stable
...
GPG verified '/home/onur/.rvm/archives/rvm-1.29.9.tgz'
Installing RVM to /home/onur/.rvm/
    Adding rvm PATH line to /home/onur/.profile /home/onur/.mkshrc /home/onur/.bashrc /home/onur/.zshrc.
    Adding rvm loading line to /home/onur/.profile /home/onur/.bash_profile /home/onur/.zlogin.
Installation of RVM in /home/onur/.rvm/ is almost complete:
...
Thanks for installing RVM 🙏
...
$ source ~/.rvm/scripts/rvm
...

.. but practically it doesn’t work when you try to install a ruby version.

$ rvm install 2.6.3
...
Updating system.....
Installing required packages: gawk, autoconf, automake, bison, libffi-dev, libgdbm-dev, libncurses5-dev, libsqlite3-dev, libtool, libyaml-dev, sqlite3, libgmp-dev, libreadline-dev, libssl-dev.....
Error running 'requirements_debian_libs_install gawk autoconf automake bison libffi-dev libgdbm-dev libncurses5-dev libsqlite3-dev libtool libyaml-dev sqlite3 libgmp-dev libreadline-dev libssl-dev',
please read /home/onur/.rvm/log/1578168638_ruby-2.6.3/package_install_gawk_autoconf_automake_bison_libffi-dev_libgdbm-dev_libncurses5-dev_libsqlite3-dev_libtool_libyaml-dev_sqlite3_libgmp-dev_libreadline-dev_libssl-dev.log
Requirements installation failed with status: 100.

The only way to satisfy dependencies seems to downgrade libsqlite3-0 package to version which came from stretch repository.

$ sudo apt-get install libsqlite3-0=3.16.2-5+deb9u1
...
The following packages will be DOWNGRADED:
  libsqlite3-0
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 1 downgraded, 0 to remove and 8 not upgraded.
Need to get 572 kB of archives.
After this operation, 129 kB disk space will be freed.
...
$ apt-cache policy libsqlite3-0
libsqlite3-0:
  Installed: 3.16.2-5+deb9u1
  Candidate: 3.16.2-5+deb9u1
  Version table:
     3.27.2-3~bpo9+1 100
        100 http://ftp.debian.org/debian stretch-backports/main amd64 Packages
 *** 3.16.2-5+deb9u1 500
        500 http://ftp.debian.org/debian stretch/main amd64 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

After downgrade, when you check rvm requirements again, its dependencies will be installed successfully.

$ rvm requirements
RVM used your Gemfile for selecting Ruby, it is all fine - Heroku does that too,
you can ignore these warnings with 'rvm rvmrc warning ignore /home/onur/github/csonuryilmaz/csonuryilmaz.github.io/Gemfile'.
To ignore the warning for all files run 'rvm rvmrc warning ignore allGemfiles'.

Unknown ruby interpreter version (do not know how to handle): RUBY_VERSION.
Checking requirements for debian.
Installing requirements for debian.
Updating systemonur password required for 'apt-get --quiet --yes update':
.....
Installing required packages: gawk, autoconf, automake, bison, libffi-dev, libgdbm-dev, libncurses5-dev, libsqlite3-dev, libtool, libyaml-dev, sqlite3, libgmp-dev, libreadline-dev, libssl-dev................
Requirements installation successful.

Now, you can install any version of ruby without a problem.

$ rvm install 2.6.3
Searching for binary rubies, this might take some time.
...
Checking requirements for debian.
Requirements installation successful.
...
Install of ruby-2.6.3 - #complete
Ruby was built without documentation, to build it run: rvm docs generate-ri
$ rvm use 2.6.3 --default
Using /home/onur/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.6.3
$ ruby -v
ruby 2.6.3p62 (2019-04-16 revision 67580) [x86_64-linux]

Happy coding.

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