Puppet install gem fails but gem is installed anyways - zurb-foundation

Question

I have a Puppet manifest that installs the Zurb Foundation gem:
class compass {
package { ["rubygems"]:
ensure => 'installed'
}
package { ['zurb-foundation']:
ensure => '3.0.6',
provider => 'gem',
require => Package['rubygems']
}
}
This causes the following error when running puppet apply:
err: /Stage[main]/Compass/Package[zurb-foundation]/ensure: change from absent to 3.0.6 failed: Could not update: Execution of '/usr/bin/gem install -v 3.0.6 --include-dependencies --no-rdoc --no-ri zurb-foundation' returned 1: INFO: `gem install -y` is now default and will be removed
INFO: use --ignore-dependencies to install only the gems you list
Building native extensions. This could take a while...
ERROR: Error installing zurb-foundation:
ERROR: Failed to build gem native extension.
/usr/bin/ruby1.9.1 extconf.rb
/usr/lib/ruby/1.9.1/rubygems/custom_require.rb:36:in `require': cannot load such file -- mkmf (LoadError)
from /usr/lib/ruby/1.9.1/rubygems/custom_require.rb:36:in `require'
from extconf.rb:4:in `<main>'
Gem files will remain installed in /var/lib/gems/1.9.1/gems/ffi-1.9.0 for inspection.
Results logged to /var/lib/gems/1.9.1/gems/ffi-1.9.0/ext/ffi_c/gem_make.out
at /etc/puppet/manifests/classes/compass.pp:25
However, doing a gem list yields the following results:
# gem list
*** LOCAL GEMS ***
chunky_png (1.2.8)
compass (0.12.2)
fssm (0.2.10)
rake (10.1.0)
rb-fsevent (0.9.3)
sass (3.2.0.alpha.277)
zurb-foundation (3.0.6)
The error causes puppet apply to not complete properly, since a lot of items are skipped because of failed dependencies. What can I do?

Answer 1

I think that the problem is that you don't have the ruby dev kit installed for you ruby (that's what's used to build native extensions).
You'll want to add something like (it may be different depending on your version of ruby):
package { 'ruby-dev':
ensure => installed,
before => Package['zurb-foundation'],
}
This should allow the gem to be built properly and let your puppet run finish too.