From: Brian Candler <b.candler@...>
Date: 2009-02-12T18:03:02+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
...
> 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'.

I think it's too late to go back now, but +1 to wishing 1.8.7 had never 
existed. It causes all sorts of confusion even on this mailing list as 
to what features do or do not exist in ruby 1.8, and gives admins an 
unnecessary dilemma: upgrade all production boxes to new and relatively 
untested code which may break existing applications? Or suffer the 
complaints from new applications which start to rely on the new 
features?

This was all handled much better in the 1.6 -> 1.8 transition.

* 1.6 was stable
* 1.7 was developmental, and added a bunch of features
* finally it was released as 1.8
* there was no meddling with 1.6
* A separate "shim" library was released which included a number of 
useful new features from 1.8 (e.g. StringIO), which allowed some code 
written using 1.8 features to run under 1.6, thus extending the lifetime 
of 1.6

Under this model: 1.9 would have been experimental, it would have been 
released eventually as 1.10 (or as 2.0, I don't care). 1.8 would have 
been a stable production branch, and for those people who wanted 
1.10/2.0 features, there would be an optional compatibility library.

As for numbering, it's not so important, but the current scheme is silly 
and appears to be based on an irrational fear of exceeding 1.9. AFAICT, 
this is either because the string "1.10" doesn't sort after "1.9", or 
because 2.0 would somehow imply the language is especially "blessed" or 
"finalised".

On that basis, 2.0 will never be released. IMO, YARV was a big enough 
change to warrant a new major number. If you want to see numbering done 
properly, look at FreeBSD's release process.

Anyway, I look forward to running ruby version 1.9.9.9 in future years 
:-)
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