Fresh install of Jekyll on fresh macOS Big Sur install will not work at all

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1

as the title says, I am having major trouble installing Jekyll on Big Sur [11.7.10] that has ruby [2.6.10p210]

Now, I want to say first, I have used Jekyll for many years. made many websites, many projects etc, all without installing any package managers or pointless extras I don’t want.
I really like having a machine that doesn’t have a silly amount of pointless things [or what I feel are pointless for my needs, which are basic].
I don’t want Homebrew, rbenv or things that. I have tried them, didn’t enjoy them because I to constant errors, simple as that. there was trouble when using them. plus when I had Jekyll before, I didn’t have any managers. just basics that worked and I was happy and I would really prefer to keep it that way

but I did decide to wipe my machine completely recently, just so I can start again and feel fresh, it felt good. but once it came to Jekyll, I couldn’t find my notes or the pages I was sure I kept to the side for a rainy day when I have to do this again. which is pretty annoying. I’m still hunting them down

I have been trying for over a week now in every sense, even recently with package managers to just get Jekyll installed again because I was getting so annoyed. but I have hit every hurdle possible.
an error for a certain version I need id install to then have other errors. once they were squashed and everything seemed good, its still having a big problem. taking out everything and trying again a different way and with nothing going correctly. even points where it crashed multiple times installing stuff and is essentially not letting me do anything.
to now its getting to the point I’m about to ditch Jekyll altogether and just use something else instead, which I don’t want to do because I enjoy using Jekyll

but I really would like the help from someone in getting Jekyll installed again in a fresh macOS Big Sur install, I even created an account to ask this question and hopefully someone can help

my main points are that:
• no package managers. no homebrew etc. I don’t want what I didn’t even have or use in the first place
• if its an outdated Jekyll version, I don’t care. I used an outdated version for ages and was happy with what I used. what version that was? I can’t remember since it was so long ago
• even say if bash or zsh [im currently set to zsh] is better for whatever. I’m open to any suggestions at this point to whittle it all down because I’m just about fed up with it all

I do know or seen that you should not use the built in ruby, that’s fair. then please add that to whatever may help me, even PATH stuff etc, which I did have set up before. because I would like to cover as many bases, which hopefully could help someone else out later down the line

excuse the long message, especially for a first, but I want to be as clear as my intentions will let me and you know what I’m after.
if there is any info you need to maybe help, then just ask. I may not reply straight away due to work, but ill make time to get this hydras final head decapitated

thanks to anyone that can help

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I have even gone as far as wiping my computer after a point to make sure that no errors from bad installs would affect things, just to make sure. but no luck

this really has become a massive problem that I’m yet to shake

again, thank you

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last thing to add. I have installed Xcode [12.5.1] and had just the command line tools installed as well at a point. I have tried different ways to get this working but with no such luck

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ok. been a few days. wiped everything I could from the machine & tried again

an install of ruby worked well. I went for 2.7.8 - more because the latest Ruby borked out, that’s fine I had an old version of Ruby last time.
then built openssl, this was the latest release, which installed fine as well

though on trying to install Jekyll, it popped up with the errors of it not finding openssl, even though I had the correct path, or I guess was the correct path in my .zshrc.
maybe Jekyll doesn’t like openssl to be the latest, but a path set should be fine, I guess?

its so close, but when had Jekyll installed before, I never ran into this many problems, on Big Sur & before

the installs went to my /usr/local/bin folder on maOS, where other installs like FFmpeg go etc

I’ve just taken it all off again, but ill post up again what the errors are for the install of Jekyll, it wasn’t a long error message, just that it couldn’t find openssl, though was sure I set the paths correctly

I have tried the Hugo framework, but to be honest, I hate the amount of bumpf it has with the structure & don’t really want to switch up since I wanna keep things as easy & light as possible without having to install package managers. im simply using Jekyll to build a site, not as a development studio that needs countless versions of things for something so little

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done solved. will be deleting this profile. posted fix in other longer thread