ruby 1.8.7 is required for Rails 3; so Leopard/10.5 users need to install ruby 1.8.7 manually to get started as if they didn't have ruby installed at all, I think.
ruby - Ruby itself is prerequisite in order to build Ruby 1.9. It can be 1.8.
source: http://redmine.ruby-lang.org/wiki/ruby/DeveloperHowto#label-...