From: "M. Edward (Ed) Borasky" Date: 2009-02-15T04:20:56+09:00 Subject: Re: If you are unhappy with the direction of Ruby 1.8.7+, respond On Sat, Feb 14, 2009 at 10:03 AM, aks wrote: > On Feb 11, 12:10 pm, Gregory Brown wrote: >> 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'. > > +1000 > > We have a reasonable-sized body of code on 1.8.7, in production, that > we will not expect to upgrade for a minor release. > > We expect _some_ compatibility issues with an 1.8 -> 1.9 upgrade. > > We expect there will be many issues with an 1.8 -> 2.0 upgrade. > > I have been developing software and managing the development process > for almost 30 years, and this issue of an incompatible minor release > is a huge violation of the Principle of Least Surprise. > > If this trend is followed, that of capriciously breaking compatibility > on minor point releases, then the language usage rate will diminish, > adoption rate will decrease, and the language will become > marginalized. > > People only have so much time and effort to work on problems. A > programming language is a tool to solve those problems. If the tool > causes MORE work, then another tool will be chosen instead. > > It's really pretty simple. > > Yeah ... my vote is for two *production* versions of the Ruby syntax and semantics: 1. The current 1.8.6 2. The current 1.9.1 I think 1.8.7 was a failed experiment -- an evolutionary dead end -- that unfortunately got picked up by Linux distributors. I'm not sure who else picked it up. Maybe that's the question we should be asking -- who absolutely positively *must* have the Ruby 1.8.7 syntax and semantics? Also, please note that I specifically called out syntax and semantics. I think platform-dependent optimizations, such as what Ruby Enterprise Edition has for 32-bit Linux and what Sun has been doing with JRuby are fair game. In fact, I encourage them and hope at some point to have the free time to contribute a few to the 1.9.1 branch. :) And I certainly agree with Matz that the Ruby Enterprise Edition optimizations should somehow get into the main 1.8.x tree and not continue to live on as a fork. As far as I know they're open source, so it's "just a matter of merging patches." :) I didn't make it to RubyConf 2008, but I was involved in 2006 and 2007, and I was under the impression that the planned "workflow" was that the alternative implementers would stay with the 1.8.6 syntax and semantics and that the core team would push ahead with the new syntax, semantics and YARV engine, with a 1.9 intermediate release and a 2.0 "final" release. I think that's what Rubinius and JRuby have done, although JRuby seems to have also embraced 1.9 as a fully-functional implementation as well. I have no idea what's happening with IronRuby. Is it even relevant any more? So yes, my vote is for Ruby 1.8.8 to have Ruby 1.8.6 syntax and semantics, all accumulated security patches, all accumulated bug fixes and all accumulated platform-dependent optimizations to the MRI core. But I'm only going to vote +1 because I'm trying to personally stay on the 1.9.1 -> 2.0 branch. -- M. Edward (Ed) Borasky I've never met a happy clam. In fact, most of them were pretty steamed.