How to get a developers' package for Ruby

[Ian Wadham]

I wish to download from the Web a package called CocoaPods, however it needs a developers’ package of Ruby to build it.

I am using MacOS Catalina 10.15.7. Apple provides Ruby in this MacOSversion, but will not allow it to be used for building non-Apple apps. They say they are phasing out the use of Ruby in MacOS and Apple Mac apps.

Googling around about this problem, all the solutions I have found recommend getting a "ruby-dev" package from Homebrew, but MacPorts, which I use a lot, recommends against mixing MacPorts and Homebrew.

Apple’s version of Ruby is ruby 2.6.3p62 (2019-04-16 revision 67580).

MacPorts has a package ruby @1.8.7-p374_12 (lang, ruby), but also packages ruby26 @2.6.8_1 (lang, ruby), ruby27 @2.7.4_1 (lang, ruby), etc. Are all of these development versions, or just runtime versions? If MacPorts has a development version of Ruby, which would be the best version to use to build CocoaPods?

Failing that, would it be safe to install Homebrew and its ruby-dev, just for building CocoaPods?

I have no intention of learning Ruby for my own development use at this stage.

Hoping someone can point me in the right direction,
Thanks in advance,
Ian Wadham.