active support cannot load bigdecimal - gets an undefined symbol error

[Hellfire01]

Steps to reproduce

Installed Ruby on an archlinux / manjaro environment ( up to date ) in a virtual machine
Installed the rails gem with a gem install rails
Tried a require 'rails' in both irb and a file

Expected behavior

No issues loading the gem

Actual behavior

The gem cannot be loaded. There seems to be an issue when trying to load the bigdecimal gem.
I have no issue when trying to load the bigdecimal gem directly.
The error is the following :

irb(main):001:0> require 'rails'
Traceback (most recent call last):
       16: from /home/matthieu/.gem/ruby/2.5.0/gems/railties-5.2.2/lib/rails/configuration.rb:4:in `<top (required)>'
       15: from /usr/lib/ruby/2.5.0/rubygems/core_ext/kernel_require.rb:59:in `require'
       14: from /usr/lib/ruby/2.5.0/rubygems/core_ext/kernel_require.rb:59:in `require'
       13: from /home/matthieu/.gem/ruby/2.5.0/gems/activesupport-5.2.2/lib/active_support/core_ext/object.rb:13:in `<top (required)>'
       12: from /usr/lib/ruby/2.5.0/rubygems/core_ext/kernel_require.rb:59:in `require'
       11: from /usr/lib/ruby/2.5.0/rubygems/core_ext/kernel_require.rb:59:in `require'
       10: from /home/matthieu/.gem/ruby/2.5.0/gems/activesupport-5.2.2/lib/active_support/core_ext/object/json.rb:8:in `<top (required)>'
        9: from /usr/lib/ruby/2.5.0/rubygems/core_ext/kernel_require.rb:59:in `require'
        8: from /usr/lib/ruby/2.5.0/rubygems/core_ext/kernel_require.rb:59:in `require'
        7: from /home/matthieu/.gem/ruby/2.5.0/gems/activesupport-5.2.2/lib/active_support/core_ext/big_decimal/conversions.rb:4:in `<top (required)>'
        6: from /usr/lib/ruby/2.5.0/rubygems/core_ext/kernel_require.rb:59:in `require'
        5: from /usr/lib/ruby/2.5.0/rubygems/core_ext/kernel_require.rb:59:in `require'
        4: from /home/matthieu/.gem/ruby/2.5.0/gems/bigdecimal-1.4.2/lib/bigdecimal/util.rb:9:in `<top (required)>'
        3: from /usr/lib/ruby/2.5.0/rubygems/core_ext/kernel_require.rb:39:in `require'
        2: from /usr/lib/ruby/2.5.0/rubygems/core_ext/kernel_require.rb:135:in `rescue in require'
        1: from /usr/lib/ruby/2.5.0/rubygems/core_ext/kernel_require.rb:135:in `require'
LoadError (/home/matthieu/.gem/ruby/2.5.0/gems/bigdecimal-1.4.2/lib/bigdecimal/util.so: undefined symbol: rmpd_util_str_to_d - /home/matthieu/.gem/ruby/2.5.0/gems/bigdecimal-1.4.2/lib/bigdecimal/util.so)

System configuration

Rails version: rails (5.2.2)
Ruby version: Ruby 2.5.3p105

I am at a loss on what to do to solve this issue could you please help me ?

[mrkn]

I couldn't reproduce the problem you were encountered:

irb(main):001:0> RUBY_DESCRIPTION
=> "ruby 2.5.3p105 (2018-10-18 revision 65156) [x86_64-darwin18]"
irb(main):002:0> gem 'rails', '5.2.2'
=> true
irb(main):003:0> gem 'bigdecimal', '1.4.2'
=> true
irb(main):004:0> require 'rails'
=> true

Could you investigate the cause of the problem on your environment?
If you don't have enough time for the investigation, please use bigdecimal 1.3.5 instead of 1.4.2.

[mrkn]

Installed Ruby on an archlinux / manjaro environment ( up to date ) in a virtual machine

@Hellfire01 How can I get the same environment of this?

[mrkn]

@Hellfire01 I found that the problem also occurs on Ubuntu bionic.

The way to avoid this problem is explicitly specifying the version of bigdecimal by gem method like:

gem 'bigdecimal', '1.4.2'

The cause is require 'bigdecimal' loads bigdecimal.so of the default-gem version rather than of the gem-installed version.

I currently don't have the way to fix this correctly.

[mrkn]

@Hellfire01 I found that the cause is the behavior of require method on Ruby 2.5.3.

On Ruby 2.6 or 2.4.5, after installing bigdecimal 1.4.2, require 'bigdecimal' loads bigdecimal.so of the gem-installed version. However, in contrast, it loads bigdecimal.so of the default gem (the bundled version) on Ruby 2.5.3.

On Ruby 2.6.0:

$ docker run --rm -it rubylang/ruby:2.6.0-bionic
root@7e104185cf11:/# gem install bigdecimal
Fetching bigdecimal-1.4.2.gem
Building native extensions. This could take a while...
Successfully installed bigdecimal-1.4.2
1 gem installed
root@7e104185cf11:/# ruby -ve 'require "bigdecimal"; p $LOADED_FEATURES.grep(/bigdecimal/)'
ruby 2.6.0p0 (2018-12-25 revision 66547) [x86_64-linux]
["/usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/2.6.0/gems/bigdecimal-1.4.2/lib/bigdecimal.so", "/usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/2.6.0/gems/bigdecimal-1.4.2/lib/bigdecimal.rb"]

On Ruby 2.5.3:

$ docker run --rm -it rubylang/ruby:2.5.3-bionic
root@689ce808458a:/# gem install bigdecimal
Fetching: bigdecimal-1.4.2.gem (100%)
Building native extensions. This could take a while...
Successfully installed bigdecimal-1.4.2
1 gem installed
root@689ce808458a:/# ruby -ve 'require "bigdecimal"; p $LOADED_FEATURES.grep(/bigdecimal/)'
ruby 2.5.3p105 (2018-10-18 revision 65156) [x86_64-linux]
["/usr/local/lib/ruby/2.5.0/x86_64-linux/bigdecimal.so"]

On Ruby 2.4.5:

$ docker run --rm -it rubylang/ruby:2.4-bionic
root@17a964abcb3a:/# gem install bigdecimal
Fetching: bigdecimal-1.4.2.gem (100%)
Building native extensions. This could take a while...
Successfully installed bigdecimal-1.4.2
1 gem installed
root@17a964abcb3a:/# ruby -ve 'require "bigdecimal"; p $LOADED_FEATURES.grep(/bigdecimal/)'
ruby 2.4.5p335 (2018-10-18 revision 65137) [x86_64-linux]
["/usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/2.4.0/gems/bigdecimal-1.4.2/lib/bigdecimal.so", "/usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/2.4.0/gems/bigdecimal-1.4.2/lib/bigdecimal.rb"]

[Hellfire01]

Will give you the output I have on all of the instructions you used as soon as I can have access to my computer.
To have the same environment, I could give you the virtual image of the VM I am using if you wish, you should have the same issue.
The environment is a new manjaro / archlinux one, it has nothing installed on it ( or at least, no program that would tamper with the environment that I would know about ). Installed Ruby with pacman and then installed the gem kimura - all of it's dependencies got installed automatically - and rails.
The issue occurs when one of those two gems tries to require bigdecimal. I have no issues when trying to directly load bigdecimal.

[mrkn]

@Hellfire01 Would you please examine the following step on your environment?

1. Assume bigdecimal 1.4.2 is installed on Ruby 2.5.3 (it should already be satisfied)
2. Execute irb
3. Evaluate require "bigdecimal"
4. Evaluate $LOADED_FEATURES.grep(/bigdecimal/)
5. Report the last result here

[Hellfire01]

will do

[mrkn]

I reported the problem of require method in Ruby 2.5 on CRuby's Redmine.
See https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/issues/15500