From: Alex Fenton <alex@...>
Date: 2008-08-06T09:08:31+09:00
Subject: Re: State of Ruby 1.8.6?

Jeff wrote:
> Can anyone provide an update to the state of Ruby 1.8.6?
> 
> I tried to follow the threads on ruby-core, but it seemed discussions
> were happening in multiple places (some mailing list, some irc, etc.)
> and I can't understand where we're at.
> 
> The official Ruby website now lists 1.8.7-p22 has the latest stable
> build, with nary a link to 1.8.6, but the Rails folks had earlier
> stated that 1.8.7 has flaws that are revealed by the Rails framework
> and they don't support 1.8.7 for now.
> 
> Last I heard 1.8.6-p230 was still buggy and not recommended for use.
> We're on 1.8.5 (RHEL) and we want to upgrade to 1.8.6 (or higher) but
> I'm unsure of what to do next.

Yep, you're not the only one. If your RHEL machine is exposed to public 
use, my personal recommendation would be to use ruby 1.8.6-p111 with a 
security patch applied; see
http://blog.phusion.nl/assets/r8ee-security-patch-20080623.txt

This should provide you with a ruby that is secure but also compatible 
with the widest range of libraries. I've been using that version (as 
provided by OS X 10.5) with absolutely no problems.

Ruby 1.8.7 is a dead-end experimental release and I wouldn't waste your 
time with it. For some reason the core ruby development team see the 
"stable" 1.8 branch as the perfect place to tinker around with cute new 
features and needless changes to the underlying extension API. As a 
result 1.8.7 (and possibly later versions of 1.8.6?) don't only break 
certain Rails versions but also any library that uses certain SWIG 
features to generate extension code.

a