Error installing libv8: ERROR: Failed to build gem native extension

I made a rails project with,

rails new test_bootstrap.

succeeded.

moved to the project dir and added the gems

gem "therubyracer"
gem "less-rails" #Sprockets (what Rails 3.1 uses for its asset pipeline) supports LESS
gem "twitter-bootstrap-rails"

and run

bundle install

after that, i have this error.

Installing libv8 (3.16.14.3)
Gem::Installer::ExtensionBuildError: ERROR: Failed to build gem native extension.

c:/RailsInstaller/Ruby1.9.3/bin/ruby.exe extconf.rb
creating Makefile
지정된 경로를 찾을 수 없습니다.                                                          지정된 경로를 찾을 수
없습니다.                                                          지정된 경로를 찾을 수 없습니다.
                                                      
c:/RailsInstaller/Ruby1.9.3/lib/ruby/ge
ms/1.9.1/gems/libv8-3.16.14.3/ext/libv8/builder.rb:58:in `setup_python!': libv8 requires
python 2 to be installed in order to build, but it is currently not available (RuntimeErr
or) from c:/RailsInstaller/Ruby1.9.
3/lib/ruby/gems/1.9.1/gems/libv8-3.16.14.3/ext/libv8/builder.rb:42:in `block in build_lib
v8/builder.rb:42:in `block in build_libv8!'
        from c:/RailsInstaller/Ruby1.9.3/lib/ruby/gems/1.9.1/gems/libv8-3.16.14.3/ext/lib
v8/builder.rb:40:in `chdir'
        from c:/RailsInstaller/Ruby1.9.3/lib/ruby/gems/1.9.1/gems/libv8-3.16.14.3/ext/lib
v8/builder.rb:40:in `build_libv8!'
        from c:/RailsInstaller/Ruby1.9.3/lib/ruby/gems/1.9.1/gems/libv8-3.16.14.3/ext/lib
v8/location.rb:24:in `install!'
        from extconf.rb:7:in `<main>'                                                    


Gem files will remain installed in c:/RailsInstaller/Ruby1.9.3/lib/ruby/gems/1.9.1/gems/l
ibv8-3.16.14.3 for inspection.
Results logged to c:/RailsInstaller/Ruby1.9.3/lib/ruby/gems/1.9.1/gems/libv8-3.16.14.3/ex
t/libv8/gem_make.out
An error occurred while installing libv8 (3.16.14.3), and Bundler cannot
continue.
Make sure that `gem install libv8 -v '3.16.14.3'` succeeds before bundling.

sorry for some Koreans. It says, It can't find the chosen path or something like that.

and i tried to run this command

gem install libv8 -v '3.16.14.3' 

throwing the same error.

try this one:

gem install libv8 -v '3.16.14.3' -- --with-system-v8

> Note : Because libv8 is the interface for the V8 engine used by therubyracer, > you may need to use libv8, even if you have V8 installed already. If > you wish to use your own V8 installation, rather than have it built > for you, use the --with-system-v8 option.

For more you can go through the documentation of libv8 on github

How to resolve libv8/therubyracer issue

I encountered similar issue in which after installing libv8, error occurs installing therubyracer. Here is my solution:

$ gem install libv8 -v '3.16.14.3' -- --with-system-v8
   
$ bundle install

-- see error installing therubyracer --

$ gem uninstall libv8

$ brew install v8

$ gem install therubyracer

$ bundle install

-- see error installing libv8 --

$ gem install libv8 -v '3.16.14.3' -- --with-system-v8

I tried the solution listed above command which looks very fine for installing individual gem, but for bundler users - you should use bundle config

Use

bundle config build.libv8 --with-system-v8 

and

bundle config build.therubyracer --with-system-v8

to configure bundler to take the parameters to be used while installing specific gem

With homebrew this helps me to solve this error.

brew tap homebrew/versions
brew install v8-315

gem install libv8 -v '3.16.14.13' -- --with-system-v8
gem install therubyracer -- --with-v8-dir=/usr/local/opt/v8-315

bundle install

Seen on rubyracer Github issues.

For new version of homebrew as homebrew/versions has been removed:

brew install v8@3.15

gem install libv8 -v '3.16.14.13' -- --with-system-v8
gem install therubyracer -- --with-v8-dir=/usr/local/opt/v8@3.15

bundle install

Suggestion by @gorner (thx)

I do not think you need therubyracer gem on windows. It is a javascript runtime using V8 engine. Hence it is making an attempt to install libv8.

You can safely remove the gem from your Gemfile.

Rails is happy to use which ever runtime it can find. execjs,nodejs etc. are all possible options.

Microsoft already embeds JScript runtime for javascript on windows, and Rails uses it. See this for more

Other workaround to fix the problem is to separate them in the Gemfile

group :production do
 gem 'libv8', '~> 3.11.8.3'
 gem 'therubyracer', :platform => :ruby
end

And then run the bundle command: bundle install --without production

I was also unable to install this gem instead of using

--with-system-v8

once try to do bundle update which worked fine for me

found this on github

assuming you have tried the mentioned steps above, installed v8-315 and v8 via brew.

brew unlink v8
brew link --force v8-315
gem install therubyracer -v '0.12.2' -- --with-system-v8

That works for me. Put that in your Gemfile

> gem 'libv8', '~>3.16.14.7'

My issue wasn't related with therubyracer at all just libv8 gem and as @rishav-bhardwaj pointed --with-system-v8 didn't do the trick, instead i had to exec

bundle update

then

bundle install

and finally

Bundle complete!

The error is gone!

Gem::Ext::BuildError: ERROR: Failed to build gem native extension.
An error occurred while installing libv8 (3.16.14.7), and Bundler cannot continue.
Make sure that `gem install libv8 -v '3.16.14.7'` succeeds before bundling.

In my case I resolved this situation by requiring 'mini_racer', '~> 0.2.6' in my Gemfile

Then bundle install command worked.

I tried the below commands on my local, it worked fine:

brew install v8@3.15
gem install libv8 -v 'YOUR_VERSION' -- --with-system-v8
gem install therubyracer -v 'YOUR_VERSION' -- --with-v8-dir=/usr/local/opt/v8@3.15
bundle install

We ran into a compilation error – out of the blue – in December 2020 on Debian 10 VMs as well as our local Debian 10 Desktops.

Bundle fails trying to compile Installing libv8 3.16.14.19 with native extensions

The error log says:

IOError: [Errno 2] No such file or directory: '/home/username/application/shared/bundle/ruby/2.6.0/gems/libv8-7.3.492.27.1/vendor/build/config/gclient_args.gni'
Running: gclient root
Running: gclient config --spec 'solutions = [
  {
    "url": "https://chromium.googlesource.com/v8/v8.git",
    "managed": False,
    "name": "v8",
    "deps_file": "DEPS",
    "custom_deps": {},
  },
]
'
Running: gclient sync --with_branch_heads
Subprocess failed with return code 1.

We've checked the tags on the Google v8 Repo and found that the requested tag 7.3.492.27.1 seems not to be available on the Google Repo:

libv8 did not install properly, expected binary v8 archive '/home/.../gyp
/libv8_snapshot.a'to exist, but it was not found 
(Libv8::Location::Vendor::ArchiveNotFound)

Our only solution was to remove therubyracer completely from the Gemfile :-(

I solved this problem using:

gem install libv8 -v '3.16.14.19' -- --with-system-v8

Try with

gem "therubyracer", "~> 0.10.2" to Gemfile

And it will install dependent gem libv8 (3.3.10.4) and the issue of build gem native extension failure got resolve.

Resolved libv8 3.16.14.7 issue using below command:

gem install libv8 -v '3.16.14.7' -- --with-system-v8

And then bundle install successfully completed.

i feel this has less to do with libv8 and more to do with therubyracer.

i received your same error while running a bundle install on a rails app. if you have encountered this similarly, try installing the gem outside of bundle like so:

gem install therubyracer

then run bundle install. i hope this works for you too.

I also had problems using libv8 and mini_racer. Resolved the problem with

brew install v8

bundle update libv8 mini_racer

Using the latest versions mini_racer 0.2.10 and libv8 7.3.492.27 worked like a charm.