From: Johan Holmberg <holmberg@...>
Date: 2002-08-19T21:58:48+09:00
Subject: Re: 1.7.2 v. the latest and 1.7.2 windows dist


On Thu, 15 Aug 2002, Dave Thomas wrote:
>
> Johan Holmberg <holmberg@iar.se> writes:
>
> >       If the 1.7 line is becoming the de-facto version people
> >       are using, I think the handling of releases should be be more
> >       "formal", so Andy can base his installer on a "real" release.
>
> This is the problem, rather than the solution.
>
> We should not be seeing known problems being fixed only in the
> development branch. If as a community we are serious about seeing Ruby
> in widespread use, then we need to put priority into supporting the
> stable releases: there should be *no* known problems in a 1.6 branch
> that have solutions in a development branch. Instead, it should be the
> norm that developers cannot introduce a solution into the development
> tree before they have first solved the problem in the stable branch.
>
> This is a serious issue. [...]
>

I completely agree (but I didn't dare to suggest such a great change
myself ... )

But when will we see any change, if the developers of Ruby shy away
from this issue (as it seems) ?

Questions about 1.6 vs. 1.7 (and sometimes the CVS version) show up
quite often on this mailing-list, but I haven't yet seen any clear
statement of the "policies" of the respective code-lines.

> In my current project, I'm using 1.6.7. I feel this is prudent.
> However, 1.6.7 has two showstopper bugs in resolv.rb which were
> fixed in the 1.7 branch.

The thing that has concerned me most has been the impossibly slow IO
in the 1.6 releases (about 50 times slower in 1.6.7 than in 1.7.2
on Windows). I asked for the first time about this in december 2001,
and one of the answers was:

>
> We've already known this fact, and fixed it on Ruby 1.7
>

That is about eight month ago, and seems like an "eon" in these
Internet days ...

*Please*, couldn't any of the developers of Ruby comment on the
principal issues raised in this thread ?

    - the policies for the 1.6 and 1.7 code-lines ?

    - the handling of bugs in 1.6.x
      (especially those already solved in 1.7 ) ?

    - the handling of releases of 1.7.x ?

    - the basic support for Ruby on Windows


/Johan Holmberg