From: "M. Edward (Ed) Borasky" <zznmeb@...>
Date: 2009-02-15T14:56:43+09:00
Subject: [ruby-core:22131] Re: A message from the maintainer of the 1.8.7+ 	series

On Sat, Feb 14, 2009 at 9:09 PM, Akinori MUSHA <akinori.musha@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> As I don't feel like sounding very constructive or informative by
> simply responding to the critisisms and concerns we are facing, I
> think I need to send a clear message to express my intentions.  So
> allow me to post it as follows.
>
>
> Library developers,
>
> If you are looking ahead and come to have a strong will to move to
> 1.9, don't hesitate and never look too far behind.  1.9 is the only
> future and 1.8.6 or prior is the ancient past for you.  1.8.7 is the
> past too, but you might as well support ruby 1.8.7+ as an extra gift
> for not-ready-to-move users only if you feel it's not too hard.  In
> ruby 1.8.8, syntactic compatibility will be added to make it even
> easier to write code for both 1.9 and 1.8.8+ in a single source file
> without compromising optimizations for 1.9.
>
> If you still need to write code for 1.8.6 but have some intention to
> support 1.9 in future, then try running your program under ruby 1.8.7
> and the forthcoming ruby 1.8.8 with a warning option (-w) as a start.
> Your code will mostly run on 1.8.7+ because it has been and will be
> kept backward compatible with 1.8.6 to a high extent (much more than
> is thought!) except some rare/unfortunate cases that are fully
> documented in the NEWS file bundled with 1.8.7.  Since 1.8.7 is
> essentially 1.8.6 plus backports from 1.9, it is almost certain that
> your code will not run on 1.9 if it doesn't even on 1.8.7.  One more
> good thing about running your code on a more recent 1.8 is that you
> can see what would stop working on 1.9 because many compatibility
> warnings have been added since 1.8.6.  Try the ruby_1_8 head if you
> want more.
>
> 1.8.6 will keep being continuously supported by a decent maintainer
> group, which I am thankful from the heart.  We will not drop 1.8.6 or
> 1.8.7+ any soon, but keep in mind that ruby 1.9 is the future.  Please
> consider adding support for 1.9 to your code.  I, as the maintainer of
> the 1.8.7+ series, hope 1.8.7+ could be used as a support tool to help
> you on your way.
>
> Regards,
>
> --
> Akinori MUSHA / http://akinori.org/

Thanks!! I'm solidly in the "make all my code work on 1.9.1 and never
look back" camp.
-- 
M. Edward (Ed) Borasky

I've never met a happy clam. In fact, most of them were pretty steamed.