[ruby-dev:49898] Ruby 2.4.0-rc1 Released

We are pleased to announce the release of Ruby 2.4.0-rc1.

Ruby 2.4.0-rc1 is the first release candidate of Ruby 2.4.0.
This rc1 is released to get feedback from the community.
Feel free to
[send feedback](https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/projects/ruby/wiki/HowToReport)
since you can still fix the features.

## [Introduce hash table improvement (by Vladimir
Makarov)](https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/issues/12142)

Improve the internal structure of hash table (st_table) by introducing
open addressing
and an inclusion order array.
This improvement has been discussed with many people, especially with
Yura Sokolov.

## Binding#irb: Start a REPL session similar to `binding.pry`

While you are debugging, you may often use `p` to see the value of variables.
With [pry](https://github.com/pry/pry) you can use `binding.pry` in
your application
to launch a REPL and run any Ruby code.
[r56624](https://github.com/ruby/ruby/commit/493e48897421d176a8faf0f0820323d79ecdf94a)
introduces `binding.irb` which behaves like that with irb.

## [Unify Fixnum and Bignum into
Integer](https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/issues/12005)

Though [ISO/IEC
30170:2012](http://www.iso.org/iso/iso_catalogue/catalogue_tc/catalogue_detail.htm?csnumber=59579)
doesn't specify details of the Integer class,
Ruby had two visible Integer classes: Fixnum and Bignum.
Ruby 2.4 unifies them into Integer.
All C extensions which touch the Fixnum or Bignum class need to be fixed.

See also [the ticket](https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/issues/12005) and
[akr's slides](http://www.a-k-r.org/pub/2016-09-08-rubykaigi-unified-integer.pdf).

## [String supports Unicode case
mappings](https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/issues/10085)

`String/Symbol#upcase/downcase/swapcase/capitalize(!)` now handle
Unicode case mappings instead of only ASCII case mappings.

## Performance improvements

Ruby 2.4 also contains the following performance improvements including
language changes:

### [Array#max, Array#min](https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/issues/12172)

`[x, y].max` and `[x, y].min` are optimized to not create a temporary array
under certain conditions.

### [Regexp#match?](https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/issues/8110)

Added `Regexp#match?`, which executes a regexp match without creating
a back reference object and changing `$~` to reduce object allocation.

### Other performance improvements

* [speed up instance variable access](https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/issues/12274)

## Debugging

### [Thread#report_on_exception and
Thread.report_on_exception](https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/issues/6647)

Ruby ignores exceptions in threads unless another thread explicitly joins them.
With `report_on_exception = true`,
you can notice if a thread has died due to an unhandled exception.

Send us feedback what should be the default for `report_on_exception`
and about report-on-GC, which shows a report when a thread is
garbage collected without join.

### [Thread deadlock detection now shows threads with their backtrace
and dependency](https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/issues/8214)

Ruby has deadlock detection around waiting threads, but its report doesn't
include enough information for debugging.
Ruby 2.4's deadlock detection shows threads with their backtrace and
dependent threads.

Try and enjoy programming with Ruby 2.4.0-rc1, and
[send us feedback](https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/projects/ruby/wiki/HowToReport)!

## Other notable changes since 2.3

* Support OpenSSL 1.1.0 (drop support 0.9.7 or prior)
* ext/tk is now removed from stdlib [Feature
#8539](https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/issues/8539)
* XMLRPC is now removed from stdlib [Feature
#12160](https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/issues/12160)

See [NEWS](https://github.com/ruby/ruby/blob/v2_4_0_rc1/NEWS) or
commit logs for details.

With those changes,
[ 2519 files changed, 288606 insertions(+), 83896
deletions(-)](https://github.com/ruby/ruby/compare/v2_3_0...v2_4_0_preview3)
since Ruby 2.3.0!

## Download

* <https://cache.ruby-lang.org/pub/ruby/2.4/ruby-2.4.0-rc1.tar.bz2>

  * SIZE:   12512729 bytes
  * SHA1:   a0439652a97a2406b691e8a1e586e2cf08c258ba
  * SHA256: 3b156b20f9df0dd62cbeeb8e57e66ea872d2a5b55fabdef1889650122bcc2ea7
  * SHA512: b43902ac7794487197df55a45256819d2e7540b77f1ed4eb68def3e0473ee98860a400862075bafadbde74f242e1dfe36a18cd6fe05ac42aae1ea6dddc9978ce

* <https://cache.ruby-lang.org/pub/ruby/2.4/ruby-2.4.0-rc1.tar.gz>

  * SIZE:   14098505 bytes
  * SHA1:   6b242f9ec7b908c9aa26e497440684ba06d86927
  * SHA256: e41ada7650eed2a5800534d1201ba7c88f1627085659df994f47ab4c5e327745
  * SHA512: 26d3c60483ce2d6eaabd7077085102fad6633f18cf5d772bacf6f563670030cb7bba22d54d8b7dfa5eac8b52990371c4a6ad1c095dff6f6b3a7bbe1a8ffb3754

* <https://cache.ruby-lang.org/pub/ruby/2.4/ruby-2.4.0-rc1.tar.xz>

  * SIZE:   9930088 bytes
  * SHA1:   7c404e8bec9859f708927f7203d4f42187e678b7
  * SHA256: 3f014b3186d10676da6c512d14c65db23ccc4bf200fed9d7c6f9a58fd1e3295b
  * SHA512: 22e209e28da1f2394f50c0a7dd5d0d4d4c0c5a6b5b0b02260fad0267a0940b98f0e2b0f36a44f87d1612555cb3022f43cd136a5186c7f87650aa20264408d415

* <https://cache.ruby-lang.org/pub/ruby/2.4/ruby-2.4.0-rc1.zip>

  * SIZE:   15785968 bytes
  * SHA1:   7d82386434ccbb1701f2995286bf29c8b9179e01
  * SHA256: 14e6910e36618cddffeb22bad5f1052f907dc31ec93d4aa945bca0905d8a52c4
  * SHA512: 5dd89320d429e5bd5faf3709be7e5b70f7355304d6324d7ac13a69187e5f1446ad5988c8186bc33f4fea8934288294f9d16fea173f39b2b39967746c4b03d1d4

## Release Comment

See also the release schedule and other information:

[ReleaseEngineering24](https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/projects/ruby-trunk/wiki/ReleaseEngineering24)


-- 
NARUSE, Yui  <[e-mail]>