MacPorts is the preferred way of installing, managing, and upgrading ports of some the software I have on my Mac.  Unfortunately mac ports does not let you specify a version.  To mediate this you can create a local repository that is checked out to a specific version and install from there.

This example is how to install ruby version 1.8.5-p12.

1) Find out the svn revision number of the Portfile by looking in:

http://trac.macosforge.org/projects/macports/log/trunk/dports/lang/ruby/Portfile

In my case it is 21127.

2) Set up a local port repository. In the file /opt/local/etc/macports/sources.conf, add this line before the rsync line:

file:///Users/Shared/dports and create that directory.

3) Install the port into your local repository.

cd /Users/Shared/dports && svn co –revision 21127
http://svn.macports.org/repository/macports/trunk/dports/lang/ruby/
lang/ruby/

4) Run portindex so that ports now finds your new (old) version of ruby.

portindex /Users/Shared/dports

5) Now you should be able to see ruby @1.8.5-p12 in addition to @1.8.6 by running:

port list

6) Install Ruby

sudo port install ruby @1.8.5-p12

You should be up and running now, so to check, run:

ruby -v

You will see something like this:

ruby 1.8.5 (2006-12-25 patchlevel 12) [i686-darwin8.10.1]

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