illegal switch in RUBYOPT: -E (RuntimeError)

Question

I keep getting this error in codekit when trying to compile my project and have no idea what it means:

System/Library/Frameworks/Ruby.framework/Versions/1.8/usr/bin/ruby: illegal switch in RUBYOPT: -E (RuntimeError)

Does anyone have any idea on how to fix this?

Answer 1

This guide should help you:

http://www.amyhaywood.com/problems-codekit-upgrading-mavericks/

...

If not, fixes to the issue discussed in the CodeKit forum:

https://github.com/bdkjones/CodeKit/issues/686

You’re on Mavericks and you’ve got CodeKit set to use an external Compass, Sass, Slim or Haml compiler. But that external compiler is running in the old version of Ruby that was migrated from Mountain Lion (Ruby 1.8.7).

All you need to do is re-install your external compiler in the Ruby 2.0 environment on Mavericks and use that compiler instead. Alternately, you can simply switch CodeKit back to using its internal compiler.

Run

sudo gem install ruby
sudo gem install compass

Answer 2

-E in Ruby 2+ means:

-Eex[:in]       specify the default external and internal character encodings

It isn't an option in Ruby 1.8 which is why you get the error, so you can either upgrade your Ruby (using RVM or rbenv since you're on Mac OS), or change your settings to not include -E.