From: Brian Candler <b.candler@...>
Date: 2009-02-01T20:34:39+09:00
Subject: Re: What's the "current" Ruby?

Phlip wrote:
> What did the transition from 1.6 to 1.8 look like?

It was pretty easy. Little fundamental changed, but a bunch of new 
useful classes like StringIO were added, and you could get them in 1.6 
by adding the shim library.

In part, that's what 1.8.7 gives you. But note that:

- 1.9 has features which can't be back-ported to 1.8 (e.g. Fiber)

- 1.9 runs a completely different engine under the hood, and bugs are 
still being turned up it.

- 1.9 makes several important non-backwards-compatible changes, which 
break not only your own code but the code in libraries that you use.

- some of us remain unconvinced about some of the new syntax, like the 
ugly -> lambda, and are still secretly hoping that they will be removed 
:-)

Of these, I think the lack of library compatibility and the different 
engine may be the most important. Lots of people stayed on 1.6.8 for a 
long time not because of any major incompatibilities with 1.8, but 
because it was a stable and trusted platform.
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