bundle install fails updating json

This has happened to be at least a few times. It is usually when I dig up an old repo on a random machine and want to run a dev server. Or something. But I run bundle install, and get this super unhelpful error. In the case of my github-pages repo:

An error occurred while installing json (1.8.3), and Bundler cannot continue.
Make sure that `gem install json -v '1.8.3'` succeeds before bundling.

In Gemfile:
  github-pages was resolved to 80, which depends on
    jekyll-mentions was resolved to 1.1.2, which depends on
      html-pipeline was resolved to 2.4.1, which depends on
        activesupport was resolved to 4.2.8, which depends on
          json

So I try running what it says: gem install json -v '1.7.7'. Which fails with this (don't worry about reading it):

[simon@mahayana psimyn.github.io]$ gem install json -v '1.8.3'
Building native extensions.  This could take a while...
ERROR:  Error installing json:
	ERROR: Failed to build gem native extension.

    current directory: /home/simon/.gem/ruby/2.3.0/gems/json-1.8.3/ext/json/ext/generator
/usr/bin/ruby -r ./siteconf20171014-13349-1574b2v.rb extconf.rb
creating Makefile

current directory: /home/simon/.gem/ruby/2.3.0/gems/json-1.8.3/ext/json/ext/generator
make "DESTDIR=" clean

current directory: /home/simon/.gem/ruby/2.3.0/gems/json-1.8.3/ext/json/ext/generator
make "DESTDIR="
compiling generator.c
generator.c: In function ‘generate_json’:
generator.c:861:25: error: ‘rb_cFixnum’ undeclared (first use in this function); did you mean ‘mFixnum’?
     } else if (klass == rb_cFixnum) {
                         ^~~~~~~~~~
                         mFixnum
generator.c:861:25: note: each undeclared identifier is reported only once for each function it appears in
generator.c:863:25: error: ‘rb_cBignum’ undeclared (first use in this function); did you mean ‘rb_cFixnum’?
     } else if (klass == rb_cBignum) {
                         ^~~~~~~~~~
                         rb_cFixnum
make: *** [Makefile:242: generator.o] Error 1

make failed, exit code 2

I don't even know what to do with that. But I don't want it. So this is "just randomly google the error" time. Issue is that certain versions of ruby want certain versions of json. Checking ruby --version I am running 2.4, which is widely reported to not work with a lot of things (i.e. some json versions or the pages gem).

One solution at this point is to install rvm or chruby, then use Ruby 2.3.something and this stuff will just work. I don't really feel like doing that. Another is to just blindly update system deps and see if that fixes anything. Kind of a blunt hammer, I will learn nothing, but it sometimes works. Kick off a pacman/apt/brew/etc update in the background just in case other things aren't working. Good reason to do that anyway in case you always forget.

Eventually find I should have just read that chain of dependencies from the first error - need a newer json version, which was changed in a newer activesupport version. So need to update the version of activesupport.

bundle update activesupport

Sorted.