rvm install ruby-1.9.3-p286: Error running 'make -j 9' (OSX: Mountain Lion)

Question

Running rvm install ruby-1.9.3-p286 gives me this error:

Error running 'make -j 9', please read /Users/epeterson/.rvm/log/ruby-1.9.3-p286/make.log
There has been an error while running make. Halting the installation.

Answer 1

This took me forever to hunt down. Was trying different versions of make, gcc, etc.

It turns out the format of the rvm_make_flags environment variable has changed from a string to an array and was not well communicated or documented. This may apply to all rvm_* env variables, not sure.

Check your ~/.rvmrc and project/path/.rvmrc.

# before
export rvm_make_flags="-j 9"

# after
export rvm_make_flags=(-j 9)

After making this change everything compiled cleanly.