[ruby-core:17646] Re: Features to be included in Ruby 1.9.1

On Jul 7, 2008, at 9:59 PM, Yugui (Yuki Sonoda) wrote:

>
> Committers and anyone who intend to write patches, let me know your
> plan. What features will be implemented by 25 Sep? What will not?

My biggest concern is not for the core interpreter, but instead for  
the standard libraries and for commonly used Gems.

The libraries are a minor issue, but still an annoying one. It is  
disturbing that Ruby 1.9 was supposed to have been relatively stable  
for over 6 months now, and yet we still have libraries that are  
supplied with the standard distribution that are broken. From the end- 
users perspective, these libraries are as much part of Ruby as is the  
String class, and it reduces confidence to find some don't work.

But a bigger issue is the state of Gems. A whole bunch of Gems are  
broken by 1.9. Changes to encoding, string indexing, and the like have  
caused all kinds of errors, both big and subtle. I'd guess that  
perhaps 50% of the Gems out there just plain don't work under 1.9.

Again, looking at it from an end user's point of view, it's  
disturbing, particularly as there's no indication until I try to use a  
Gem whether or not it works. And once a user finds a couple of Gems  
they rely on are broken by 1.9, they just won't switch.

Until this situation is addressed, I don't think we'll see widespread  
adoption of 1.9. And if we don't see widespread adoption, I question  
the point of releasing it at all.

So, along with the release plans for the interpreter itself, I think  
I'd like to see two other things happen:

1. Change the RubyGems built into 1.9 so that it defaults  
required_ruby_version to '< 1.9'. That way, any gem that doesn't  
explicitly set required_ruby_version will automatically not run on  
1.9. This will act as an obvious indicator to both users and the gem's  
maintainer that something needs to be done before the Gem is  
acknowledged to be compatible with 1.9. It will also allow us to do  
queries on RubyForge to track the progress of the 1.9 migration. With  
many gems, no change will be required apart from an update to the  
gemspec. But forcing the maintainer to make that update means that the  
gem is explicitly listed as being 1.9 compatible.

2. As a parallel activity, I think we need to make Gem maintainers  
aware of the need to make their Gems compatible. We have contact  
details in RubyForge耀tarting a maintainers' wiki, and emailing all  
maintainers with details, will be a good start.

I love the features in 1.9. I seems a shame not to have people use  
it.  Let's put some effort into making the whole package, and not just  
the interpreter, ready for widespread adoption.



Dave