From: Michal Suchanek <hramrach@...>
Date: 2009-02-12T10:03:28+09:00
Subject: Re: If you are unhappy with the direction of Ruby 1.8.7+, respond

On 11/02/2009, Charles Oliver Nutter <charles.nutter@sun.com> wrote:

>  Minor version releases should certainly not break things except as needed
> to fix bugs. Ruby 1.8.7 did this initially. They should not add entirely new
> APIs incompatible with other minor releases. They should not add new syntax
> incompatible with other minor releases. Ruby 1.8.7 does the former, and
> 1.8.8 syntax backports will do the latter. More points against.
>
>  I still feel like Ruby 1.9 should have been 2.0. Then 1.8.7 could have been
> 1.9, 1.8.8 could be 1.10, and so on, and people depending on "Ruby 1.8" to
> behave like "Ruby 1.8" would not be forced to upgrade.
>
>  In general, I don't have any doubt that 1.8.7 and 1.8.8 would be fine
> standalone releases, but making them be minor version number changes
> essentially forces everyone to upgrade eventually, whether they want to or
> not, since Ruby distributors generally don't expect a 0.0.x release to be
> filled with incompatible changes or additions. Ubuntu, for example, now
> installs 1.8.7 by default, so Ubuntu users are now much more likely to write
> code that doesn't work on 1.8.6.

+1