Recently I upgraded to Mojave on my Macbook Pro (late 2015). I then decided it was also time to upgrade Homebrew. I needed to update postgres, so thought I would update everything else. postgres was a success. Read more in my posts entitled Upgrading PostgreSQL from version 10.4 to 11.1 via Homebrew (OSX) and Changing your (Homebrew) PostgreSQL configuration from trust to md5.

Unbeknownst to me until today, my Ruby system install broke in the process. I hadn’t done anything related to Ruby installations in a couple of years, and had to refresh my memory on it. Had I installed with RVM? I checked to see if I had it installed on my computer. No. What else could I have used to manage my Ruby installs? I googled for information regarding the error I got when trying to watch a file on a Node project I am working on in which I decided to switch from CSS to SCSS (today). I just find it to be a much more efficient and powerful way to work with global styles. When I tried to run sass --watch public/styles/styles.scss, I got the following error in my Terminal console:

can't find gem sass (>= 0.a) with executable sass (Gem::GemNotFoundException)

So then I decided to re-install Sass. I ran

gem install sass

That did not work either. It installed Sass alright, but I had updated Ruby with Homebrew, so installing the gem that way did not reach the Homebrew Cellar. Then I remembered that since El Capitan, OSX is a rootless system, and Apple prevents user applications (or users) to modify /usr/bin for security reasons. A StackOverflow thread I came across mentioned rbenv. Like rvm, rbenv is a Ruby installer and version manager which one can install via Homebrew. And that is what I had done ages ago. I checked to see if it was installed on my machine, and indeed it was! Then I googled to see how I could fix my issue with rbenv. I came across a very helpful post that helped me resolve my Ruby problem.

The post takes you through the steps of installing rbenv, but I already had it installed. When I ran brew upgrade, the upgrade probably affected rbenv as well! Evidently, the path to my Ruby got a bit screwed up. So this is what I did:

First I checked to see what versions of Ruby I had available to me by rbenv to install with the command rbenv install -l.

Next I wanted to make sure that my rbenv system version was the same as my ruby -v. I ran rbenv global and version 2.3.7 was returned from both rbenv global and ruby -v.

Then I installed the latest version of Ruby available in rbenv with the command rbenv install 2.7.0-dev.

Next I ran the command rbenv global to check what my system version of Ruby was after the rbenv install. It returned 2.7.0-dev. After that, I checked to so what ruby -v would output to Terminal just to make sure that everything was on the same page. It too returned version 2.7.0-dev.

Then I had to set a new global default version with 2.7.0-dev using rbenv, so I ran the command rbenv global 2.7.0-dev. I was not successful the first time around. Probably because I had run the command gem install sass which I did before fixing my Ruby upgrade. I suggest testing your sass gem install in an application to make sure it actually works. Version displays mean nothing. It is the path that counts. Installing rbenv modifies the PATH variable, adding its own directory before any of the others. rbenv’s path to Ruby when it executes a Ruby install is different from what the default would be.

At first I got a strange stderr in Terminal when I tried to run sass --watch after installing ruby -v 2.7.0-dev with rbenv and setting the new system version 2.7.0-dev with rbenv global. It was the following:

Traceback (most recent call last): 2: from /usr/local/bin/sass:22:in <main>' 1: from /usr/local/Cellar/ruby/2.6.0/lib/ruby/2.6.0/rubygems.rb:302:inactivate_bin_path' /usr/local/Cellar/ruby/2.6.0/lib/ruby/2.6.0/rubygems.rb:283:in `find_spec_for_exe': can't find gem sass (>= 0.a) with executable sass (Gem::GemNotFoundException)

Thinking at first that I should install version 2.6.0 with rbenv and use it instead, I tried installing 2.6.0 and setting it as the system default. After that, I ran sass --watch and the resulting output to Terminal was that sass commands were only available with version 2.7.0-dev. I switched back to 2.7.0-dev as my default system version and ran sass --watch again. This time I was successful. I don’t know how I got to the point of success, but I did. I think this was related to the path issue I mentioned earlier. Later I found another StackOverflow thread regarding the topic that might help those that have encountered Ruby issues with their Mac for the first time that might be of help. It relates to High Sierra, but should also apply to Mojave.

As mentioned in my article entitled How to save terminal output to a file for future reference, I closed out of the Terminal instance containing the stderr(s) related to Ruby/Sass before I could copy and paste them to a file for future reference. There I do discuss how to create commands or scripts to automate the process. This fuzziness will never happen again thanks to Command Line commands and Unix scripting!

Homebrew is fantastic and I have been using it since its inception. As with anything else, it too can have its moments. But in the end, everything is always ironed out.

Note: It is situations like this that got me started with this Developer Blog. Now I contribute to it much more religiously to record such occurrences and their resolutions for future reference. Writing things down is also a great way of committing it to memory and gaining a greater understanding of the subject matter! It’s also a way of giving back because of others who have helped me along the way.

Related Resources:

• How to save Terminal output to a file for future reference

• Installing rbenv and Updating to the Newest Ruby Version on macOS 10.13.5

• rbenv on Github

• a lot of error after updating to mojave #4975

• Can’t find gem sass (>= 0.a) with executable sass

• Why can’t I install Sass on Mac OS Sierra?

• Ruby Sass to be put to pasture on March 26, 2019