From: Alex Fenton <alex@...>
Date: 2009-02-12T02:38:52+09:00
Subject: Re: If you are unhappy with the direction of Ruby 1.8.7+, respond

Gregory Brown wrote:
> I am setting up two threads in the hopes that we can see names
> attached to opinions about the decision to break backwards
> compatibility between Ruby 1.8.6 and Ruby 1.8.7+
> This one is for those who wish that Ruby 1.8 would go *back* to being
> 1.8.6 compatible in Ruby 1.8.8.   If you agree with this, share your
> thoughts or at least a simple '+1'. 

Gregory - thank you for raising this here. I read this ruby-core thread:
http://www.ruby-forum.com/topic/178191#new

last night, and in particular Akinori MUSHA's statement:

"Yes.  Backporting syntactic changes is a big part of the plan for ruby
1.8.8"

Luckily I was in bed else I'd have fallen off my chair. This seems to me 
the most bonkers development plan I've seen in a long while.

Stable releases are meant to be *stable*; minor point releases are meant 
to be *API compatible*, backwards and forwards. I can't think of any 
other serious open-source project that would even contemplate adding 
random bits of syntax and API calls in minor releases.

I expressed the same opinion at length and with some fervour regarding 
the release of 1.8.7: http://www.ruby-forum.com/topic/150251#663291

so I won't go on again. However one of the main reasons for allowing 
1.8.7 to cherry-pick backports was that, at the time of the decision, 
(Nov 2006) 1.9.1 seemed a while off, and some didn't want the language 
frozen until then. That seemed impatient to me then, but now there's a 
release version of 1.9.1 on the table, I can see no justifcation at all.

The progression to 1.9 isn't that hard anyway; the language hasn't 
changed so much. And I can't see that having a whole load of 
incompatible 1.8.x mongrel releases washing about (as they end up in 
distros etc) helps anyway.

Just to say again, I'm grateful for the work of the core developers and 
maintainers - but it seems like 1.8 branch is being treated like a 
personal playground rather than a stable version. There's not even a 
statement of what features might be backported.

Ooops, I've gone on at length again.

Anyway, +1 for Ruby 1.8.8 being a bugfix release implementing the same 
API as 1.8.6

alex