From: Igal Koshevoy <igal@...>
Date: 2008-06-29T23:19:00+09:00
Subject: Re: Ruby 1.9.0/1.8.7/1.8.6/1.8.5 new releases (Security Fix)

Cheri Anaclerio wrote:
> Thanks, Igal!  So when I want to go back to using /usr/bin/ruby and it's 
> associated gems, would I just delete the stow directory
>   
Not quite. When you want to get rid of a version, first tell stow to 
remove the symlinks:
    sudo stow -d /usr/local/stow --delete ruby-1.8.6p230smartleaf
   
And then you can "rm -rf" the "/usr/local/stow/ruby-1.8.6p230smartleaf" 
directory. You should keep the "/usr/local/stow directory" though, in 
case you need to stow away something else.

However, please note that although the p230smartleaf fixes the 
segmentation faults, the p230 version it relies on seems to change the 
Ruby API in a number of ways. I'm working with folks in the ruby-core 
mailing list to try to make sense of the situation and determine how 
significant the breakage is.

For the moment, it may be safest to use one of the backport patches 
developed against p111 or p114, or the Ruby Enterprise Edition which 
includes these patches. Also note that many OS vendors have shipped new 
packages with some of these fixes, including FreeBSD, Ubuntu, and 
Fedora. However, it's unclear how good these unofficial patches are, and 
it'd be best if the Ruby developers can ship an officially blessed fix 
for this in the near future.

> I am contemplating the solution of just upgrading to Ruby 1.8.7 and 
> Rails 2.1 since my project is still in development.  However, from 
> reading the forums it looks like there are many plugins that won't work 
> with Rails 2.1 and other issues that still need to be resolved.  Any 
> thoughts on the upgrade route?
If you don't have to promise availability for your app, it may be worth 
trying out 1.8.7 and reporting your experiences. However, please 
understand that very few people are using that version and that if 
earlier versions of Rails don't run on it, this may indicate deeper 
issues, so this will be somewhat adventurous.

I ported a moderate sized Rails app from 2.0.2 to 2.1.0 recently, it 
works well and I really liked that it provides built-in solutions for a 
number of features we'd implemented on our own and it was nice to 
replace those with the much nicer bundled solutions.

-igal