[ruby-core:17428] Re: 1.8 release management

Yukihiro Matsumoto wrote:
> = release management
> 
> From 1.8.6, we have reformed our release management.  Ruby 1.8 release
> manager is Akinori MUSHA <knu at iDaemons.org>.  He is responsible for
> the 1.8 head release (i.e. 1.8.7 right now).  Besides that, we
> maintain two prior versions for production maintenance (1.8.5 and
> 1.8.6 now).  Shouhei URABE <shyouhei at ruby-lang.org> is responsible
> for those versions.  We don't think we need to fix this process.

As I understand it, maintenance has been dropped for 1.8.5. I doubt if 
that has a serious impact except for those running servers on old Linux 
distros that shipped with 1.8.5. They'll clearly have to upgrade to 1.8.6.

But I think the syntactic and semantic differences between 1.8.7 and 
1.8.6 are a problem for a number of reasons:

1. The vast majority of Ruby 1.8 users are on 1.8.6.
2. Most of the other implementations are using the 1.8.6 syntax and 
semantics as their base.
3. It's difficult for most Linux distros to maintain two 1.8.x versions.
4. I think "backporting" features from 1.9 takes resources and attention 
away from 1.9.

This last reason is actually my main concern. How are we going to get 
people to use 1.9? How are we going to evolve to 2.0? I personally will 
load 1.8.7 only if Gentoo makes it the default Ruby 1.8. I don't see the 
point in testing it, or coding to it, when I can test and code to 1.9.