From: Michal Suchanek <hramrach@...>
Date: 2008-10-13T21:42:12+09:00
Subject: Re: Updating Ruby 1.8.6 to 1.8.6-p287 in Debian 4

On 13/10/2008, Brian Candler <b.candler@pobox.com> wrote:
> Ollivier Robert wrote:
>  > In article <40c7d0973ffa54eff620c0c70682d3c5@ruby-forum.com>,
>  > Brian Candler  <b.candler@pobox.com> wrote:
>  >>Is there general consensus on the stability of 1.8.7pXXX with Rails?
>  >>Anyone running it in large-scale production?
>  >
>  > I think we should pretend this release never existed at all
>
>
> I agree entirely.
>
>  The OP, who is a Rails user, wanted to upgrade to 1.8.6p287 (bad idea
>  IMO). Some people were giving advice to upgrade to 1.8.7pXXX (which is
>  an even worse idea IMO, but I wanted to check for other people's
>  opinions)

Debian jumping to 1.8.7 is probably the wrong move. Not only there are
a few things that would break if you run them in 1.8.7.

Should you start writing your code on 1.8.7 you might use methods that
do not exist in the usual setups with ruby 1.8.5 or 1.8.6.

While 1.8.7 is an interesting experiment I do not really see much use
for that release for now.


>
>  I've been avoiding 1.8.7 entirely, since it seems to give the worst of
>  all worlds: a bunch of features imported from 1.9, which I don't want,
>  yet not sufficiently widely used and tested to have shaken out the bugs.
>
>  But even the 1.8.6 branch isn't a stable production branch any more; so
>  we are left with running 1.8.6p114.xyz where .xyz is some distro's
>  bundle of security patches :-(
>

While the security release just after the vulnerability announcement
was rushed a lot of testing was done before the 1.8.6 p287 release.

I suggest this release if you have to install something that's not
packaged for your system.

This is also what the Windows installers use.

On Debian (and with package managers in general) it is non-trivial to
install a piece of software so that it seamlessly integrates with the
rest. The best way is to install addons (such as a different Ruby
version) separately in /opt/<softwarename> or /usr/local unless you
have good knowledge of the way the related software is packaged.

Thanks

Michal