Why won't bundler install JSON gem?

Question

I get the following error when attempting to run cap production deploy.

DEBUG [dc362284]    Bundler::GemNotFound: Could not find json-1.8.1.gem for installation
DEBUG [dc362284]    An error occurred while installing json (1.8.1), and Bundler cannot continue.
DEBUG [dc362284]    Make sure that `gem install json -v '1.8.1'` succeeds before bundling.

It may be important to note that this deployment was working, than I upgraded to Ruby 2.1.0 to remove an encoding error. I upgraded locally which worked fine. I ran rvm install 2.1.0 and rvm use 2.1.0 then changed my .ruby-version file to reflect this Ruby upgrade.

The bundle install command works locally, but produces the same above error when I ssh onto the destination server and run this command.

If I run gem list I can see this in the list of gems.

...
jquery-rails (3.0.4)
json (1.8.1)
less (2.3.2)
...

If I try the recommended solution gem install json -v '1.8.1' Locally and on the destination server I get the following output:

Building native extensions.  This could take a while...
Successfully installed json-1.8.1
Parsing documentation for json-1.8.1
Done installing documentation for json after 0 seconds
1 gem installed

So it appears the gem is installed, right? Why is this happening? How can I solve this? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

I have gem json, '1.8.1' in my gemfile already unfortunately — Thomas, Jan 13 '14 at 15:38
bundle show json give /Users/ME/.rvm/rubies/ruby-2.1.0/lib/ruby/gems/2.1.0/gems/json-1.8.1 — Thomas, Jan 13 '14 at 15:38

score 75 · Answer 1 · answered Apr 13 '16 at 19:23

75

$ bundle update json
$ bundle install

answered Apr 13 '16 at 19:23

danvitoriano

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This did it for me on Ruby 2.4.0! – Deem Jul 03 '17 at 14:38
Works for rbenv ruby 2.4.1 too (debian / ubuntu) – Aleksey Deryagin Jul 31 '17 at 10:35
This worked for me as well. Ruby 2.4.0 High Sierra. Thank you! – Robert_T_Taylor Nov 21 '17 at 18:51
Worked for me too under Ruby version 2.4.2p198. Thanks. – fatihturan Mar 05 '18 at 11:35
I upvoted this answer because it worked for me while the accepted answer did not. Like @Robert_T_Taylor, I ran this on macOS High Sierra. – Scott Lawrence Mar 19 '18 at 12:28

score 68 · Accepted Answer · answered Jan 13 '14 at 15:41

68

So after a half day on this and almost immediately after posting my question I found the answer. Bundler 1.5.0 has a bug where it doesn't recognize default gems as referenced here

The solution was to update to bundler 1.5.1 using gem install bundler -v '= 1.5.1'

answered Jan 13 '14 at 15:41

Thomas

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Had the same issue even after updating bundler, doing a `gem install json -v '1.8.1'` after updating fixed the error message for me. – Jason Denney Feb 04 '14 at 18:34
5

```gem install json -v '1.8.1'``` followed by ```bundle package``` did the trick for me – Obie May 21 '14 at 15:55
Saved me a few swear words. Thanks for this! – Catfish Sep 01 '14 at 23:55
1

Isn't bundler supposed to install these gems for you? I don't understand why you have to install the gems manually. http://bundler.io/rationale.html I'm using Bundler version 1.7.11 – Snowcrash Jan 18 '15 at 15:34
This did not worked for me, sudo apt-get install libgmp3-dev worked , found solution https://github.com/flori/json/issues/253 – Pramod Shinde Dec 09 '15 at 18:31
2

I'm using bundler version 1.14.6 and also getting this error – Catfish Mar 21 '17 at 02:39
On MAC `bundle update json` worked it updated to 1.8.6 from 1.8.3 – Pramod Shinde Mar 20 '20 at 13:21

score 49 · Answer 3 · answered Dec 12 '15 at 16:04

49

Run this command then everything will be ok

sudo apt-get install libgmp-dev

answered Dec 12 '15 at 16:04

Jameel Grand

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score 41 · Answer 4 · edited Jul 07 '20 at 13:14

41

if you are in MacOS Sierra and your ruby version is 2.4.0.The ruby version is not compatible with json 1.8.3.

You can try add this line in your Gemfile:

gem 'json', github: 'flori/json', branch: 'v1.8'

This works for me!

edited Jul 07 '20 at 13:14

Iulian Onofrei

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answered Jan 04 '17 at 04:53

Juice007

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Rohini Choudhary · Answer 5 · 2017-04-14T12:21:19.247

35

To solve this problem, simply run:

bundle update

It will update the version of your bundler. Then run:

bundle install

Your problem will get solve. Solution is well explained here.

edited Apr 14 '17 at 12:21

answered Apr 13 '17 at 09:38

Rohini Choudhary

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+1 Really helpful and got me unstuck. After `bundle update`, the install worked great. Thank you for the clean solution. – twknab Oct 29 '17 at 21:54
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`bundle update` will update all your gems. `gem update bundler` will update bundler. – eebbesen Feb 16 '18 at 02:51

score 20 · Answer 6 · answered Apr 06 '16 at 19:11

20

I found the solution here. There is a problem with json version 1.8.1 and ruby 2.2.3, so install json 1.8.3 version.

gem install json -v1.8.3

answered Apr 06 '16 at 19:11

Ajeet Khan

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This worked fantastically for me on OSX, Ubuntu across multiple bad versions of the json gem. In one case I had to delete the lock file and rebuild from scratch: git rm Gemfile.lock bundle install – fuzzygroup Oct 11 '16 at 20:16
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Worked fine, first of all I delete the `Gemfile.lock` and then just run `bundle install` and that's it. – alexventuraio Oct 17 '16 at 00:04

score 12 · Answer 7 · answered Aug 10 '16 at 00:54

You should try

$ sudo gem install json -v '1.8.2'

in my case (Ubuntu 14.04) that didn't work directly and I had to do this:

$ sudo apt-get install ruby-dev

and then I could install the gem and continue. Had one more problem that was fixed by:

$ sudo apt-get install libsqlite3-dev

Hoping helps.

score 9 · Answer 8 · edited Mar 20 '17 at 13:38

9

If the recommended answer didn't help because you are already using a newer version of bundler. Try the solution that worked for me.

Delete everything inside your vendor folder. Add a line to your gemfile

gem 'json', '1.8.0'

Then run - bundle update json.

It seems to be an issue with 1.8.1 so going back to 1.8.0 did the trick for me.

edited Mar 20 '17 at 13:38

Philip Kirkbride

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answered Nov 04 '14 at 21:20

Adam

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Worked when upgrading from ruby 2.0.0 to 2.2.4. – Loubot Feb 05 '16 at 23:08
1

No need to delete everything. "bundle update json" sufficed. – Joffrey Baratheon Apr 12 '16 at 21:47
1

Using `gem 'json', '1.8.6'` worked for me. You might want to try that. – etagwerker Oct 24 '17 at 14:40

score 7 · Answer 9 · answered Apr 22 '14 at 12:08

I ran into this error while trying to get a project to run on my local dev box (OSX 10.6), using Sinatra and Postgresql (through activerecord), running on an rvm'd ruby 2.1. I found my answer here: https://github.com/wayneeseguin/rvm/issues/2511

My exact problem (after the first block of log entries):

I also get an error when trying to build native extensions for gems

The answer:

rvm reinstall 2.1.0 --disable-binary

The explanation:

OSX does not have a package manager so all libraries have to be installed manually by user, this makes it virtually impossible to link the binary dynamically, and as you can see there are problems with the (pseudo)statically linked binary.

For the sake of completeness, I had first forgotten to update rvm (rvm get head), which yielded some other errors, but still needed the --disable-binary flag once I had done so.

Get the following error with your solution: "Version '2.1.0' is ambiguous. Cannot select Ruby implementation/version, please be more specific. Cannot reinstall unknown package ''" — holyredbeard, Apr 23 '14 at 18:45
You might not have ruby 2.1.0, or more than one version installed through rvm. Run `rvm list`, and you'll see what is your current version. Use the full string (e.g. ruby-2.0.0-p451) instead of the `2.1.0` mentioned above. — Matthias, Apr 25 '14 at 11:08

score 7 · Answer 10 · edited Mar 01 '17 at 22:33

7

bundle update json. Helped to get through.

edited Mar 01 '17 at 22:33

Peter DeWeese

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answered Jul 31 '16 at 17:21

anti-k

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Successfully installed json 1.8.6 (was 1.8.3) – Simon Liu Feb 18 '17 at 07:20

score 5 · Answer 11 · answered May 03 '18 at 04:50

5

When I tried to install the json gem using gem install json separate from just using bundle install I got ERROR: Failed to build gem native extension., looking that up I found using

    apt-get install ruby-dev

did the trick

answered May 03 '18 at 04:50

PetrolHead

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score 3 · Answer 12 · answered Jun 14 '16 at 07:13

3

For OS X make sure you have coreutils

$ brew install coreutils
$ bundle

answered Jun 14 '16 at 07:13

Tim Kozak

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Although I got a warning "Warning: coreutils 8.32 is already installed and up-to-date", this did the trick. – Paul Verschoor Oct 16 '20 at 09:10

score 2 · Answer 13 · answered Feb 07 '14 at 19:59

This appears to be a bug in Bundler not recognizing the default gems installed along with ruby 2.x. I still experienced the problem even with the latest version of bundler (1.5.3).

One solution is to simply delete json-1.8.1.gemspec from the default gemspec directory.

rm ~/.rubies/ruby-2.1.0/lib/ruby/gems/2.1.0/specifications/default/json-1.8.1.gemspec

After doing this, bundler should have no problem locating the gem. Note that I am using chruby. If you're using some other ruby manager, you'll have to update your path accordingly.

yup, it's simple to solve a problem with json bundle. Thank you — Hai Nguyen, Jul 03 '15 at 08:12

score 2 · Answer 14 · answered Apr 12 '16 at 11:23

2

I was missing C headers solution was to download it for Xcode, this is the best way.

xcode-select --install

Hope it helps.

answered Apr 12 '16 at 11:23

Haris Krajina

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score 2 · Answer 15 · answered Nov 11 '16 at 15:26

2

Bundle was failing to install json -v '1.8.1' and deleting my Gemfile.lock and running bundle again solved this issue for me.

answered Nov 11 '16 at 15:26

davidmccoy

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score 1 · Answer 16 · answered May 02 '16 at 13:09

1

I installed the latest version of json:

gem install json

Then deleted the line json(1.8.1) from the Gemfile.lock and did a

bundle install

And then the Gemfile.lock file uses json(1.8.3) without erros

answered May 02 '16 at 13:09

PerseP

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Just running a bundle update solved this issue for me... in other words using a newer JSON gem build. – Francis Malloch Feb 12 '17 at 02:27

score 0 · Answer 17 · answered Jul 11 '16 at 19:14

0

Switch ruby version from 1.9 to 2.2 with rvm did the job for me

answered Jul 11 '16 at 19:14

Koala7

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iHS · Answer 18 · 2016-09-06T17:35:01.033

For me, some of the answers mentioned earlier were helpful from understanding point of view, but those didn't solve my problem.

So this is what I did to solve issue.

Modified gemfile.lock to update json (2.0.2) (Earlier, it was 1.8.3)
Check the Bundler version installed (Bundler -v command). I had version 1.12.5 installed
Install bundler version 1.11.2 (using gem install bundler -v '1.11.2')
Then run bundle install

Devin · Answer 19 · 2017-07-28T15:03:20.813

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For macOS Sierra:

I ran into this error When i used bundler(v1.15.3) in Rails(v4.2) project. The solution for me is gem uninstall bundler -v '1.15.3' and gem install bundler -v '1.14.6'.

edited Jul 28 '17 at 15:03

answered Jul 28 '17 at 07:41

Devin

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Why won't bundler install JSON gem?

19 Answers19

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