Rails - Could not find a JavaScript runtime?

Installing a javascript runtime library such as nodejs solves this

To install nodejs on ubuntu, you can type the following command in the terminal:

sudo apt-get install nodejs

To install nodejs on systems using yum, type the following in the terminal:

yum -y install nodejs

Note from Michael 12/28/2011 - I have changed my accept from this (rubytheracer) to above (nodejs) as therubyracer has code size issues. Heroku now strongly discourage it. It will 'work' but may have size/performance issues.

If you add a runtime, such as therubyracer to your Gemfile and run bundle then try and start the server it should work.

gem 'therubyracer'

A javascript runtime is required for compiling coffeescript and also for uglifier.

Update, 12/12/2011: Some folks found issues with rubytheracer (I think it was mostly code size). They found execjs (or nodejs) worked just as well (if not better) and were much smaller.

n.b. Coffeescript became a standard for 3.1+

Add following gems in your gem file

gem 'therubyracer'gem 'execjs'

and run

bundle install

OR

Install Node.js to fix it permanently for all projects.