This is the second time that I’ve hit this issue trying to install the ‘pg’ Ruby gem on Ubuntu 12.04.
$ gem install pg Building native extensions. This could take a while... ERROR: Error installing pg: ERROR: Failed to build gem native extension. /home/dspisak/.rvm/rubies/ruby-1.9.3-p362/bin/ruby extconf.rb checking for pg_config... yes Using config values from /usr/bin/pg_config checking for libpq-fe.h... yes checking for libpq/libpq-fs.h... yes checking for pg_config_manual.h... yes checking for PQconnectdb() in -lpq... no checking for PQconnectdb() in -llibpq... no checking for PQconnectdb() in -lms/libpq... no Can't find the PostgreSQL client library (libpq) *** extconf.rb failed *** ...
I found workaround in a StackOverflow issue here. My steps are:
$ mv ~/.rvm/usr/lib ~/.rvm/usr/lib_rvm $ vim Gemfile ### change the gem source protocol to http for a few minutes $ bundle install $ vim Gemfile ### change the source back to https $ mv ~/.rvm/usr/lib_rvm ~/.rvm/usr/lib
The process renames the rvm user library directory while we install pg. After successfully installing the gem, restore the Gemfile source and the user library.