unable to build sqlite3-ruby on dreamhost (debian lenny/5.0.8)

I'm not able to build sqlite3-ruby gem on dreamhost (trying to setup diaspora), I get following errors

Installing sqlite3 (1.3.3) with native extensions /usr/lib/ruby/1.8/rubygems
/installer.rb:482:in `build_extensions': ERROR: Failed to build gem native 
extension. (Gem::Installer::ExtensionBuildError)

/usr/bin/ruby1.8 extconf.rb 
checking for sqlite3.h... yes
checking for sqlite3_libversion_number() in -lsqlite3... yes
checking for rb_proc_arity()... no
checking for sqlite3_initialize()... no
sqlite3-ruby only supports sqlite3 versions 3.6.16+, please upgrade!
*** extconf.rb failed ***

I tried installing开发者_C百科 a newer sqlite3 version (3.6.23) at $HOME/sqlite but neither gem nor bundler seems to be able to build against this new sqlite version, but it fails with same error message.

I tried

gem install sqlite3-ruby -- --with-sqlite3-dir=$HOME/sqlite

also added following lines to appdir/.bundler/config

BUNDLE_BUILD__SQLITE3-RUBY: --with-sqlite3-dir=$HOME/sqlite

I'm able to build 1.2.1 version of sqlite3-ruby but setting that in appdir/.bundler/config didn't help.

Any ideas to fix this would be nice. I should be able to use an older sqlite3-ruby version or I should be able to build against the newer locally installed sqlite.

Update:

Luckily sqlite3 was a requirement only for development mode, so

~/gems/bin/bundle install --path vendor/bundle_gems --without development 

succeeded (skipping sqlite3)!

have you tried

sudo apt-get upgrade sqlite3
sudo apt-get install libsqlite3-dev

and after that:

gem install sqlite3-ruby

?