"Sorry, you can't use byebug without Readline" #289

olivierlacan · 2016-10-04T11:38:03Z

I started encountering this issue inside a Rails app with byebug 9.0.5 and Ruby 2.2.5. Didn't change either Rails or Ruby after installing byebug. One day it worked fine, the next I couldn't boot the Rails app due to this issue. I'm really curious if there's any other solution than reinstalling that Ruby version.

    Sorry, you can't use byebug without Readline. To solve this, you need to
    rebuild Ruby with Readline support. If using Ubuntu, try `sudo apt-get
    install libreadline-dev` and then reinstall your Ruby.
/Users/olivierlacan/.rbenv/versions/2.2.5/lib/ruby/gems/2.2.0/gems/activesupport-4.2.7.1/lib/active_support/dependencies.rb:274:in `require': dlopen(/Users/olivierlacan/.rbenv/versions/2.2.5/lib/ruby/2.2.0/x86_64-darwin15/readline.bundle, 9): Library not loaded: /usr/local/opt/readline/lib/libreadline.6.dylib (LoadError)
  Referenced from: /Users/olivierlacan/.rbenv/versions/2.2.5/lib/ruby/2.2.0/x86_64-darwin15/readline.bundle
  Reason: image not found - /Users/olivierlacan/.rbenv/versions/2.2.5/lib/ruby/2.2.0/x86_64-darwin15/readline.bundle

It's honestly a little odd, I don't remember needing to do anything special with Rubies on prior versions of byebug so I'm thinking this might be less straightforward than it appears perhaps. In any case this issue should help others since I couldn't find any exact matches on Google for this exact error message.

The text was updated successfully, but these errors were encountered:

olivierlacan · 2016-10-04T12:29:58Z

Apparently this could be due to Homebrew:

@olivierlacan I had this issue on Friday after bumping a bunch of Homebrew libs. Had to recompile Ruby to fix!

@olivierlacan one of these will be the offender - brew uses --installed readline

For me this was the output:

$ brew uses --installed readline
augeas   bash   postgresql   python   sqlite

chattsm · 2016-10-04T13:07:09Z

Hi @olivierlacan, what is your output from brew info readline?

Mine is...

$ brew info readline
readline: stable 7.0 (bottled) [keg-only]
Library for command-line editing
https://tiswww.case.edu/php/chet/readline/rltop.html
/usr/local/Cellar/readline/7.0 (45 files, 2M)
  Poured from bottle on 2016-09-30 at 11:07:04
From: https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew-core/blob/master/Formula/readline.rb

My Ruby (managed by ruby-install / chruby) broke after 2016-09-30 at 11:07:04, which is when I updated a bunch of my Homebrew installs and ran a brew cleanup (thus removing readline v6.0).

$ ls -l /usr/local/opt/readline/lib
total 2744
-r--r--r--  1 chattsm  admin   84728 30 Sep 11:07 libhistory.7.0.dylib
lrwxr-xr-x  1 chattsm  admin      20  7 Sep 22:16 libhistory.7.dylib -> libhistory.7.0.dylib
-r--r--r--  1 chattsm  admin   84480  7 Sep 22:16 libhistory.a
lrwxr-xr-x  1 chattsm  admin      20  7 Sep 22:16 libhistory.dylib -> libhistory.7.0.dylib
-r--r--r--  1 chattsm  admin  459608 30 Sep 11:07 libreadline.7.0.dylib
lrwxr-xr-x  1 chattsm  admin      21  7 Sep 22:16 libreadline.7.dylib -> libreadline.7.0.dylib
-r--r--r--  1 chattsm  admin  751528  7 Sep 22:16 libreadline.a
lrwxr-xr-x  1 chattsm  admin      21  7 Sep 22:16 libreadline.dylib -> libreadline.7.0.dylib

I had to re-compile Ruby to fix this issue. Interesting to know if there is a better/simpler fix for it!

olivierlacan · 2016-10-04T13:11:27Z

Someone also suggested adding rb-readline as a development group dependency in the Gemfile: https://twitter.com/ndrx42/status/783288843906801664

olivierlacan · 2016-10-04T13:12:16Z

@chattsm

$ brew info readline
readline: stable 7.0 (bottled) [keg-only]
Library for command-line editing
https://tiswww.case.edu/php/chet/readline/rltop.html
/usr/local/Cellar/readline/6.3.8 (46 files, 2.0M)
  Poured from bottle on 2015-09-11 at 16:22:41
/usr/local/Cellar/readline/7.0 (45 files, 2M)
  Poured from bottle on 2016-10-03 at 18:43:51
From: https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew-core/blob/master/Formula/readline.rb
==> Caveats
This formula is keg-only, which means it was not symlinked into /usr/local.

OS X provides the BSD libedit library, which shadows libreadline.
In order to prevent conflicts when programs look for libreadline we are
defaulting this GNU Readline installation to keg-only.


Generally there are no consequences of this for you. If you build your
own software and it requires this formula, you'll need to add to your
build variables:

    LDFLAGS:  -L/usr/local/opt/readline/lib
    CPPFLAGS: -I/usr/local/opt/readline/include

olivierlacan · 2016-10-04T13:36:55Z

Looks like this is related to #118 and could actually be a dupe, please close if that's the case. It seems like recommending rb-readline as a development dependency tends to lead to issues.

deivid-rodriguez · 2016-10-04T17:23:47Z

@olivierlacan Did you try reinstalling your Ruby after sorting out your readline libraries? I'm not aware of a better solution...

By the way, anyone contributing to the discussion here, feel free to improve the troubleshooting instructions for OSX. I don't use that, so I have no idea. Or maybe a wiki page should be created and linked from the error message, I don't know.

kntmrkm · 2016-10-05T05:43:11Z

I had reinstalled ruby. It have been works well.

Minor ===== * Had to add `rb-readline` gem for this Ruby to work correctly. deivid-rodriguez/byebug#289 (comment)

deivid-rodriguez · 2016-10-09T22:43:20Z

I'm going to close this since it does not seem like a problem in byebug.

Not certain why but in certain circumstances ruby seems to lose it's link to the readline dylib causing byebug to raise errors when being required, possibly as a result of a 'brew update'. The fix in this commit is mentioned here: deivid-rodriguez/byebug#289 The alternative seems to be to recompile ruby.

mehta · 2016-12-06T07:45:15Z

To fix this (for OSX, tested on Sierra), run following command in your shell -

ln -s /usr/local/opt/readline/lib/libreadline.dylib /usr/local/opt/readline/lib/libreadline.6.dylib

kirillshevch · 2016-12-08T13:03:13Z

@mehta thanks!

parkerholcomb · 2016-12-08T14:52:13Z

@mehta bloody perfect!

hraynaud · 2016-12-14T18:38:01Z

@mehta solution worked for me too.

jasonfagan · 2017-01-05T08:10:32Z

@mehta definite fix for Sierra, no reinstall or recompile of Ruby needed. Thanks a lot for this tip!!

iqbalhasnan · 2017-01-06T14:31:05Z

Thanks @mehta

ghost · 2017-01-08T08:55:23Z

@mehta worked for me, thanks.

Schwad · 2017-01-08T10:55:32Z

@olivierlacan 's post worked for me, thanks so much!

Someone also suggested adding rb-readline as a development group dependency in the Gemfile: https://twitter.com/ndrx42/status/783288843906801664

Also on a side note, loving Ruby Facets man!

wflanagan · 2017-01-14T18:47:24Z

Worked for me in El Capitan as well.

bhoormeena · 2017-01-16T07:43:34Z

@mehta thanks buddy!

dgnv · 2017-03-01T18:04:09Z

@mehta 👍

pinkopaque22 · 2017-03-27T14:26:37Z

Thanks man! That did the trick. SO grateful.

ragavendra · 2017-03-27T19:59:45Z

@mehta answer worked for me too, but had to do a bit change on Linux like below.

sudo ln -s /usr/lib/libreadline.so /usr/lib/libreadline.so.6

danmoore2205 · 2017-04-10T11:00:41Z

thanks @mehta saved me!

soultech67 · 2017-04-13T16:57:17Z

I was using the gem 'rb-readline' workaround but it stopped working for me yesterday. After some googling I found that a solution is to rebuild ruby on os/x, this way it's built on the latest libs / header files. This worked for me and seems more like a solution than a work-around.

I wrote up a gist here to give solutions for rvm and rbenv users: https://gist.github.com/soultech67/33ba09706e091c06ce66684cd28015ac

neohunter · 2017-05-06T23:56:46Z

Worked also on el capitan.

Iqlaas · 2017-06-19T01:59:21Z

@mehta still works mate. cheers.

txssseal · 2017-06-23T15:41:34Z

@mehta gracias senor

baird · 2017-06-28T02:17:10Z

@mehta my dude

pragmat1c1 · 2017-06-28T13:16:11Z

@mehta Dankeschoen! Excellent!

… installation - when installing (on Mac OS Sierra for instance), `byebug` generated an error since it required `readline` which wasn't installed - see `byebug` related issue @link deivid-rodriguez/byebug#289

bf4 · 2018-01-30T21:23:04Z

Apologies for commenting on an old thread, but if you're on homebrew, the simplest command is something like brew switch readline 6.3.8 (it's likely installed in /usr/local/Cellar/readline/ )

wayne-crs · 2018-12-10T23:49:56Z

@mehta Cheers. Worked for me on High Sierra

yogeshmurugesan · 2018-12-24T07:33:02Z

@mehta worked for me.

coisnepe · 2019-01-14T09:28:41Z

@mehta 's command is indeed what fixed the issue for me. Just make sure you're using it with the right libreadline version in the second part.

ln -s /usr/local/opt/readline/lib/libreadline.dylib /usr/local/opt/readline/lib/libreadline.7.dylib

baurine · 2019-01-21T06:36:00Z

@bf4 's solution works for me, thanks @bf4 .

I met this problem after homebrew upgrading the readline from 7.0.5 to 8.0.

> ls -alh /usr/local/opt/readline/lib
total 1448
drwxr-xr-x  11 baurine  staff   352B Dec 20 05:07 .
drwxr-xr-x  12 baurine  staff   384B Jan 17 15:27 ..
-r--r--r--   1 baurine  staff    39K Jan 17 15:27 libhistory.8.0.dylib
lrwxr-xr-x   1 baurine  staff    20B Dec 20 05:07 libhistory.8.dylib -> libhistory.8.0.dylib
-r--r--r--   1 baurine  staff    45K Dec 20 05:07 libhistory.a
lrwxr-xr-x   1 baurine  staff    20B Dec 20 05:07 libhistory.dylib -> libhistory.8.0.dylib
-rw-r--r--   1 baurine  staff   234K Jan 17 15:27 libreadline.8.0.dylib
lrwxr-xr-x   1 baurine  staff    21B Dec 20 05:07 libreadline.8.dylib -> libreadline.8.0.dylib
-r--r--r--   1 baurine  staff   397K Dec 20 05:07 libreadline.a
lrwxr-xr-x   1 baurine  staff    21B Dec 20 05:07 libreadline.dylib -> libreadline.8.0.dylib

> ls -alh /usr/local/Cellar/readline
total 0
drwxr-xr-x   5 baurine  staff   160B Jan 17 15:27 .
drwxrwxr-x  75 baurine  admin   2.3K Jan 17 15:35 ..
drwxr-xr-x  12 baurine  admin   384B Jan 25  2018 7.0.3_1
drwxr-xr-x  12 baurine  staff   384B Sep  6 16:41 7.0.5
drwxr-xr-x  12 baurine  staff   384B Jan 17 15:27 8.0.0

I use brew switch readline 7.0.5 to revert it back and it works back.

> brew switch readline 7.0.5
Cleaning /usr/local/Cellar/readline/8.0.0
Cleaning /usr/local/Cellar/readline/7.0.5
Cleaning /usr/local/Cellar/readline/7.0.3_1
Opt link created for /usr/local/Cellar/readline/7.0.5

LarryWachira · 2019-01-23T16:39:18Z

If you use rvm you can equally run rvm reinstall <ruby-version> to resolve the readline mismatch.

skbailey · 2019-01-23T18:32:13Z

@mehta the real MVP, this worked for me

itcentralstation · 2019-01-27T10:19:52Z

Same problem as @baurine in that some library is looking for libreadline.7.dylib even after I upgraded to readline 8. So I used

cd /usr/local/opt/readline/lib
ln -s libreadline.dylib libreadline.7.dylib

I'm not proud but it works.

pranav-bagree · 2019-01-28T22:48:54Z

@itcentralstation this worked for me! Thanks 👍

davidcpell · 2019-01-31T17:50:29Z

same as @coisnepe - had to use 7:

$ ln -s /usr/local/opt/readline/lib/libreadline.dylib /usr/local/opt/readline/lib/libreadline.7.dylib

srikirancse · 2019-02-04T19:58:22Z

@mehta Man of the hour!

storrence88 · 2019-03-14T15:31:36Z

@itcentralstation This worked for me! Thanks!

jamsi · 2019-03-25T08:47:16Z

@davidcpell thanks mate, worked well :D

masak2009 · 2019-05-13T10:29:44Z

@mehta - This solution is absolutely right. All you need is locate libreadline.dylib in your macOS system (I am using macports). Probably libreadline.dylib is symlink to another libreadline library. In my case it is libreadline.8.0.dylib. So in same dir where is this file create symlink:
ln -s libreadline.8.0.dylib libreadline.6.dylib

Now byebug starts to work

sarsena · 2019-07-03T14:43:44Z

Thank you! I just needed to change the symlink to point to 7 instead but it worked after. ln -s libreadline.8.0.dylib libreadline.7.dylib

mothule · 2019-07-23T03:18:16Z

I changed the version with brew switch and solved it, because it's on Mac.

like it $ brew switch readline 7.0.3_1.

masak2009 · 2019-07-23T07:42:26Z

@mothule - On mac you should use brew or macports. The key is in "missing file" or "missing link" which solve at general the problem.

theotherdon · 2019-08-21T14:41:35Z

I ran into this issue today and it appears that the problem for me was that a recent update for XCode failed. Reinstalling a fresh version of XCode and then reinstalling the Ruby version worked for me.

stdedos · 2019-09-09T08:27:16Z

Originally posted by @Schwad in #289 (comment)

@olivierlacan 's post worked for me, thanks so much!
Someone also suggested adding rb-readline as a development group dependency in the Gemfile: https://twitter.com/ndrx42/status/783288843906801664
Also on a side note, loving Ruby Facets man!

Would it make sense to add it as a dependency of byebug @deivid-rodriguez?

deivid-rodriguez · 2019-09-09T11:36:27Z

We tried that for a while but that caused problems for non windows users. I'll try to migrate to use the brand new pury ruby readline implementation that ruby 2.7 will use by default: reline.

lavaldi · 2019-09-27T02:11:33Z

how @DoNalD-S said you can just reinstall Ruby 👌

rbenv uninstall <ruby-version>
rbenv install <ruby-version>

Oceantidote · 2019-11-20T07:55:08Z

@mehta you legend 🙏

MFRWDesign · 2020-03-20T16:11:14Z

On OSX:

brew list readline

Then look for the installed version of readline's libreadline.X.X.dylib library. For illustration through example, this is what I saw:

○ → brew list readline
/usr/local/Cellar/readline/8.0.4/include/readline/ (8 files)
/usr/local/Cellar/readline/8.0.4/lib/libhistory.8.0.dylib
/usr/local/Cellar/readline/8.0.4/lib/libreadline.8.0.dylib
/usr/local/Cellar/readline/8.0.4/lib/pkgconfig/readline.pc
/usr/local/Cellar/readline/8.0.4/lib/ (6 other files)
/usr/local/Cellar/readline/8.0.4/share/doc/ (3 files)
/usr/local/Cellar/readline/8.0.4/share/info/ (3 files)
/usr/local/Cellar/readline/8.0.4/share/man/ (2 files)
/usr/local/Cellar/readline/8.0.4/share/readline/ (16 files)

Then just cd into the appropriate directory, here it would be:

cd /usr/local/Cellar/readline/8.0.4/lib/

And then you can create the symlink you need for your missing library. For me, that the original error was Library not loaded: /usr/local/opt/readline/lib/libreadline.7.dylib, so I ran this command:

ln -s libreadline.8.0.dylib libreadline.7.dylib

And like magic - it's fixed!! Thank you @mehta !!!

adarsh added a commit to adarsh/youshouldtotally that referenced this issue Oct 7, 2016

Update Ruby Version to 2.3.1

d0dec30

Minor ===== * Had to add `rb-readline` gem for this Ruby to work correctly. deivid-rodriguez/byebug#289 (comment)

adarsh mentioned this issue Oct 7, 2016

Update Ruby Version to 2.3.1 adarsh/youshouldtotally#20

Merged

deivid-rodriguez closed this as completed Oct 9, 2016

raq929 mentioned this issue Oct 31, 2016

Brew Upgrade Updates Readline Breaking pry ga-wdi-boston/ruby-template#9

Open

misaka mentioned this issue Dec 1, 2016

Fix byebug error ministryofjustice/correspondence_tool_public#97

Merged

jsugarman mentioned this issue Jul 11, 2017

add rb-readline to gemfile ministryofjustice/Claim-for-Crown-Court-Defence#1992

Merged

nicolasrouanne mentioned this issue Jul 17, 2017

Add rb-readline dev dependency lewagon/rails-templates#25

Closed

"Sorry, you can't use byebug without Readline" #289

"Sorry, you can't use byebug without Readline" #289

Comments

olivierlacan commented Oct 4, 2016

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chattsm commented Oct 4, 2016

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