From: Lyle Johnson <jlj@...>
Date: 2002-06-18T01:56:41+09:00
Subject: Re: system & changes to ENV on Windows

> Ok, how do I get hold of a suitable 1.7 version of Ruby ?
> Rubys "home page" says "Devel is 1.7.2", but there is no link to
> where that can be found.

You can download a snapshot of the latest CVS sources for Ruby 1.7 here:

    ftp://ftp.ruby-lang.org/pub/ruby/snapshot.tar.gz

or you can download a snapshot of the latest CVS sources for Ruby 1.6 here:

    ftp://ftp.ruby-lang.org/pub/ruby/stable-snapshot.tar.gz

You can also check out the code from CVS yourself by following the
instructions on this page:

    http://www.ruby-lang.org/en/cvsrepo.html

> And another link says "Stable snapshot is available. (2001-01-18)",
> which seems to be very old by now.

I think that date (2001-01-18) indicates when Matz first started providing
downloadable "snapshots" of the CVS repository. But the snapshots themselves
are updated every night (I guess).

> If I as an ordinary Ruby user, want to use something newer than
> 1.6.7, what should I try?

If it is the case that the bug fix you need was only made for Ruby 1.7 (i.e.
if it wasn't back-ported to Ruby 1.6) you'll need to try out the Ruby 1.7
snapshot.

> >From the web-page it seems that use of a newer version is
> discouraged. Is that right ?

A lot of people are using Ruby 1.7 at this time, even though it is the
development version and not the "stable" release. It seems fairly stable at
this point, but the usual caveats about using a development version instead
of the release version still apply.