[ruby-core:48471] [ruby-trunk - Bug #6809] Deprecation of Config

Issue #6809 has been updated by Eregon (Benoit Daloze).

Category set to ext
Target version set to 2.0.0

I would like some feedback on this.

It seems a potential compatibility problem, and is very annoying because it might fail to build a gem/extension which would be just fine otherwise.
I'm thinking the warning should stay in 2.0, so most users have time to adapt to it.
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Bug #6809: Deprecation of Config
https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/issues/6809#change-31800

Author: Eregon (Benoit Daloze)
Status: Open
Priority: Normal
Assignee: 
Category: ext
Target version: 2.0.0
ruby -v: ruby 2.0.0dev (2012-07-15 trunk 36395) [x86_64-darwin10.8.0]


I saw nobu removed Config (the old RbConfig) at r36330.

While I totally approve this (use the RbConfig constant instead of Config), I already noticed a few failures due to it.

The comment in lib/rbconfig/obsolete.rb says "compatibility for ruby-1.8.4 and older",
so that would mean RbConfig was available in the version after ruby 1.8.4 (which was done at r9970).

In this case, it sounds safe to just rename Config to RbConfig for libraries not expecting to run on these old versions (< 1.8.5 if I understand well).
It means some complications for libraries which want to support older rubies.

I would like to discuss about removing Config for 2.0, because of the number of failures I'm seeing and the fact the warning has been added in 1.9.3. Would postponing the removal to the release after 2.0 be a good idea? Or do you think it's the right time, and people should have adapted from a while? (I guess quite a few did not try with 1.9.3 or did not notice the warning)

Also, do you know any workaround, for example when installing a gem using Config in its extconf.rb?
RUBYOPT=/path/to/some/script/which/define/Config.rb is one way, but it's a bit tedious (fixing the gem of someone else is not quick, especially during the holidays).


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