Fixing RVM errors while installing a new Ruby version on macOS

October 02, 2023

I was trying to install a new Ruby version on my macOS machine using RVM, but I kept getting errors such as:

Error running '__rvm_make -j12',
please read /Users/<MYUSER>/.rvm/log/<TIMESTAMP>_ruby-3.0.0/make.log
 
There has been an error while running make. Halting the installation.

Error running '__rvm_make -j12',
please read /Users/<MYUSER>/.rvm/log/<TIMESTAMP>_ruby-3.0.0/make.log
 
There has been an error while running make. Halting the installation.

I tried uninstalling and reinstalling RVM, but that didn't help. I tried upgrading OpenSSL, as that seemed to be somewhat related, but that didn't help either.

The solution

I finally found a solution that worked for me: I uninstalled RVM and installed frum, it just works, and it's ~6x faster than RVM.

You can install it with Homebrew:

$ brew install frum

$ brew install frum

And then, just make sure it's properly loaded in your shell. For bash or zsh, all you need to do is add the following to your ~/.bashrc or ~/.zshrc:

eval "$(frum init)"

eval "$(frum init)"

Then, you can install a new Ruby version:

$ frum install 3.1.0

$ frum install 3.1.0

And that's it, you have a new Ruby version, a working version manager, and you can get back to work.