Installed ruby from source on debian, apt-get no longer works due to failed dependencies, how do I fix it?

Question

I installed ruby from source, and everything ruby related seems to work just fine. I can't install anything that depends on ruby using apt because I don't want 2 versions of ruby installed. After I install mcollective from dpkg using --ignore-depends, apt-get stops working entirely.

root@puppet:~# apt-get install ganglia-monitor
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
You might want to run 'apt-get -f install' to correct these:
The following packages have unmet dependencies:
 ganglia-monitor : Depends: libconfuse0 (>= 2.5) but it is not going to be installed
                   Depends: libganglia1 (= 3.1.7-1+b1) but it is not going to be installed
 mcollective : Depends: ruby (>= 1.8.1)
 mcollective-client : Depends: ruby (>= 1.8.1)
 mcollective-common : Depends: ruby (>= 1.8.1)
E: Unmet dependencies. Try 'apt-get -f install' with no packages (or specify a solution).

I don't want to remove mcollective, but when I try that, everything works again. Does anyone know a workaround to tell apt to stop looking for ruby? Thanks, matt.

Answer 1

Use equivs to build a dummy package of ruby with a version of 1.8.1 or higher -- see this page, and replace all instances of "package-minimal" with "ruby", and all instances of "1.0" in the version number with the version number of your separately-built Ruby.