From: Rick DeNatale Date: 2009-02-12T06:14:23+09:00 Subject: Re: If you are unhappy with the direction of Ruby 1.8.7+, respond --0016e64b06d891bf250462ab1a92 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit On Wed, Feb 11, 2009 at 1:42 PM, M. Edward (Ed) Borasky wrote: > I've posted my opinions on Ruby-Core, but I'll summarize them here: > > 1. The Ruby community should proceed with all deliberate speed towards > ISO standardization of the language. Matz and his team announced that they were beginning and effort towards this end at RubyConf 2008. However, I'm not sure I understand if their approach of doing this under the aegis of (IIRC) the Linux Foundation gets us to an ISO standard, based on my experiences of the ANSI/ISO process when I worked on standards like X3J20 for Smalltalk. > > 2. There are two "de facto" standards for the Ruby language at present. > a. Ruby 1.8.6 as documented in the Pickaxe, Second Edition > b. Ruby 1.9.1 as documented in "The Well-Grounded Rubyist", > "Programming Ruby 1.9" and "The Ruby Programming Language". > > All other versions are irrelevant and a waste of precious developer > energy as far as I'm concerned. > > 3. I don't think it matters what the numbers are, but since the two "de > facto" standard versions have designated numbers already, why not keep > them as they are? As others point out, there are a lot of packaging systems which make the assumption that a minor version number change is compatible. When the ruby team breaks that assumption, it can cause havoc for those who install and maintain their system with standard tools like dpkg/apt-get, ports, etc. Some of the maintainers of packaged software don't really work with the packages they maintain, and aren't necessarily aware of or appreciative of philosophical differences like these. When the upstream developers break the assumptions of the package maintainers, it can lead to as much trouble as when the package maintainers disagree with the philosophy of the upstream developers and do things their own way. I'm talking about what debian/ubuntu do/did to rubygems here. -- Rick DeNatale Blog: http://talklikeaduck.denhaven2.com/ Twitter: http://twitter.com/RickDeNatale --0016e64b06d891bf250462ab1a92--