ImageScience and RubyInline Errors

If you have seen this sort of thing:

ActionView::TemplateError: Expected image.rb to define Image

or this:

SystemExit (exit):
    /usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/RubyInline-3.6.5/lib/inline.rb:70:in `exit'
    /usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/RubyInline-3.6.5/lib/inline.rb:70:in `rootdir'
    /usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/RubyInline-3.6.5/lib/inline.rb:84:in `directory'
    /usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/RubyInline-3.6.5/lib/inline.rb:258:in `so_name'
    /usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/RubyInline-3.6.5/lib/inline.rb:294:in `load_cache'
    /usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/RubyInline-3.6.5/lib/inline.rb:678:in `inline'
    /usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/image_science-1.1.3/lib/image_science.rb:84

in your log files when using ImageScience you may well of been a bit confused and frustrated – I was.

Then through a fair bit of googling I came across Stephen Sykes blog and his post which gave me the answer. It turns out that Ruby Inline a directory called “.ruby_inline” to store its extensions. It chooses this directory from either the environment setting INLINEDIR, or if that isn’t set then HOME – unfortunately for myself, Stephen and presumably yourself if this is of interest your server is probably running as a user without a HOME dir!!! To get around this simply add this to your environment.rb file (and make sure the server user has access!):

if RAILS_ENV == "production"
  ENV['INLINEDIR'] = RAILS_ROOT + "/tmp"
end

Not the clearest errors ever thrown!!!!