From: "David A. Black" Date: 2008-08-07T20:40:45+09:00 Subject: Re: State of Ruby 1.8.6? Hi -- On Wed, 6 Aug 2008, Gregory Brown wrote: > On Tue, Aug 5, 2008 at 8:08 PM, Alex Fenton wrote: > >> 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. > > Though I might put it more humble, I couldn't agree more. I wish that > 1.8.7 was actually just a special branch of 1.8 that could be checked > out of svn, rather than an official release. I need to work around my > package managers to keep things stable by running 1.8.6, and for my > 1.9 enabled work, I need to really run Ruby 1.9 to check if things are > working properly, so 1.8.7 does nothing to help me. > > It's a neat experiment, but maintenance and purity wise, I hate it. My understanding of 1.8.7 is that it mainly exists to facilitate transition to 1.9. The problem, for me, is that it's an extra step: when I move to 1.9, I will just move in one step. 1.8.7 is too big a change from 1.8.6, and not enough of a change to really be 1.9. It's definitely much bigger than any other third-digit change I've seen in Ruby, and is causing more confusion and ambivalent feeling than any other. One problem is that the default API docs are now 1.8.7, which means they're really almost 1.9-compliant, and that means that people are getting confused when their installed Ruby is so different from the docs. I'm not saying that the third digit changes should not really change, but in my opinion 1.8.7 is too different from 1.8.6, and really isn't what I think of as a "full-blooded" version of 1.8 -- meaning, it feels like a development version of 1.9 and not an incremental step from 1.8.6. My current plan, which of course might change, is to use 1.8.6 until there's a 1.9 that I am fully comfortable with, and then switch to 1.9. I say all of this somewhat reluctantly, because it could be misunderstood as saying that the work done on 1.8.7 should not have been done or is flawed. I think it's fine that it's been done, but my current belief is that it should not be called 1.8.7. David -- Rails training from David A. Black and Ruby Power and Light: * Advancing With Rails August 18-21 Edison, NJ * Co-taught by D.A. Black and Erik Kastner See http://www.rubypal.com for details and updates!