It started simply enough: I wanted to use webrat to write view specs with its Matchers to add some specs to this very weblog. I swear, that’s all I wanted to do.

When I managed to run those specs properly, I’d get this message:

HI. You’re using libxml2 version 2.6.16 which is over 4 years old and has plenty of bugs. We suggest that for maximum HTML/XML parsing pleasure, you upgrade your version of libxml2 and re-install nokogiri. If you like using libxml2 version 2.6.16, but don’t like this warning, please define the constant I_KNOW_I_AM_USING_AN_OLD_AND_BUGGY_VERSION_OF_LIBXML2 before requring nokogiri.

Very well: let me upgrade libxml2. Big mistake.

I tried downloading libxml2 version 2.7, then I went through the usual motions: configure, make, sudo make install.

Then I couldn’t run anything. Sometimes I couldn’t even boot. I kept seeing the wrong architecture message when I tried to run various programs on my MacBook.

I tried deleting libxml from /usr/lib and rebuilding, but then I couldn’t even sudo. I didn’t know what the hell was going on.

Finally, I booted from my backup disk (thank you, SuperDuper!) and copied /usr/lib/libxml* back onto my internal hard disk. I booted from my internal disk and all returned to normal, including the annoying nokogiri message. I suppose I’ll have to live with the message for now.

Still… has anyone successfully upgraded libxml to version 2.7 on Mac OS 10.5.7? I’d like to know.