From: Pit Capitain <pit.capitain@...>
Date: 2009-02-12T07:17:25+09:00
Subject: Re: If you are unhappy with the direction of Ruby 1.8.7+, respond

2009/2/11 Alex Fenton <alex@deleteme.pressure.to>:
> Well, Rails. And many SWIG-based C-extensions - eg wxRuby.

AFAIK 1.8.7 introduced a method that Rails was using. This could have
happened in previous Ruby upgrades as well. I don't see why this is
something special with 1.8.7.

As for the C extensions: do you have more information about what was
changed in the Ruby internals that lead to those problems?

> But this misses the main point - that there is no assurance that code
> developed using 1.8.7 (or 1.8.8) will run on 1.8.6.

Again, this is nothing special with the 1.8.7 release. It has been
like this since I'm using Ruby, which is since 2000. The important
point is that (most) 1.8.6 code still runs on 1.8.7.

The only thing I understand you having problems with is that for other
software projects you can expect that for example no new methods are
introduced between a.b.c and a.b.d, so that the Rails problem wouldn't
have occurred there. But, again, Ruby version numbers have never been
working like that. Despite this we have been able to arrive at 1.8.6,
and I still don't see what's so special with 1.8.7 that we should stop
at 1.8.6.

Regards,
Pit