AutomateIt installation issues

If you get this error when running the automateit program, you need to either install AutomateIt 0.71219 or run gem install builder. The problem is that AutomateIt relies on the ActiveRecord package, which recently changed and no longer installs the Builder package.

The automateit program is usually installed as /usr/bin/automateit. However, this path will vary depending on how RubyGems is configured. If which automateit can’t locate the program, then the gem program installed it into some strange directory.

Try running export PATH=`gem env gemdir`/bin:$PATH and re-run which automateit again. This workaround relies on the possibly wrong assumption that gem installed the program into a directory like /var/lib/gems/1.8/bin, like it does on Debian.

If the program still can’t be found, run gem env for clues and poke around the directories it lists until you find the automateit program.

This is not an AutomateIt bug and there’s nothing that can be done about it other than fixing how RubyGems works and how it’s repackaged.

If you just installed Ruby and RubyGems, then you’ll probably need to reboot so that the paths are updated.

If rebooting doesn’t help, you may be better off installing a different version of Ruby or RubyGems rather than debugging.

If you want to debug, run gem env gemdir to display RubyGem’s base directory. You will get a path similar to: c:/ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8. Unlike Unix, the automateit executable is probably not installed in a gems subdirectory, but rather in the c:\ruby\bin directory, at a path like c:\ruby\bin\automateit.cmd.

JRuby installs a gem’s executables into the same path with the jruby command, so if you can run jruby, you should be able to run automateit. For example, if you installed JRuby into /opt/jruby, the AutomateIt executable will probably be installed as /opt/jruby/bin/automateit.

If you have both JRuby and Ruby installed, be sure you’re calling the commands for the right one. For example, you must have JRuby in your PATH first to use its gem program. Also be sure that you’re using the correct JRuby commands, such as jruby, jirb and such.