Comments on: Ruby 1.9 & Rails 3.0

By: grimen

grimen — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 23:26:03 +0000

@Shanna: It’s was nothing wrong with RUBY_VERSION >= ‘1.9? in apps when hundreds of gems was not compatible in 2009. I’m coding in Ruby 1.9 all day long, but neither of us are superman and can make all gems be 1.9-compatible: I’t sup to the community as whole to fix that. While complex gems like ruby-debug is not 1.9, RUBY_VERSION >= ‘1.9? is totally fine as I see it. Rather 1.9 in mind than not at all. A I said, I’m only on 1.8 when I have to.

By: Shanna

Shanna — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 07:03:31 +0000

Formatting error on the code sample, with no preview and no edits. Gist is here: http://gist.github.com/300090

By: Shanna

Shanna — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 06:56:27 +0000

@Grimen. I don’t know who started the RUBY_VERSION >= ’1.9′ idiom but they got it backwards. Ruby 1.9 is released, everyone should be writing for (and with) 1.9 aiming for 1.8 compatibility not the other way around.

I understand it’s a subtle difference but an important one and has the added advantage that when the time comes to drop 1.8 support (and it will just like 1.6 conditions disappeared over time) it will be easy to remove all your 1.8 compatibility code which is neatly marked as such

if RUBY_VERSION = ’1.9′
# … 1.8 compatibility backports, monkey patches get required here.
end

Developing any new code in 1.8 at this point isn’t doing anyone any favors and hinders progress that we desperately need. Even if you don’t personally you can bet every one of us uses gems daily that would benefit from 1.9.

By: Sam Granieri

Sam Granieri — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 03:05:46 +0000

Rails 3.1 should require ruby Ruby 1.9.2 at the bare minimum. Let’s make it happen!

By: Phrozen

Phrozen — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 02:05:43 +0000

Agreed! Most of active projects will do their migration to 3.0 & 1.9 in order to support the new technologies, those slow or abandoned projects will not be compatible any more, leaving room for new ones with better and cleaner code. Harsh progress?? but still progress…

By: Mark Bates

Mark Bates — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 22:51:11 +0000

@Jeremy: I completely second Dan’s suggestion of adopting DataObjects for AR. That’s a great idea Dan, and one that I wish happened a long time ago. Think of how much cleaner the AR/ARel code would get if it only had to work with a single unified API. Plus, I used to be a big DM supporter/contributor back in the day, and I can tell you that those drivers are rock solid and FAST!

By: Dan Kubb

Dan Kubb — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 22:42:08 +0000

@Jeremy: Or we could just push towards adopting DataObjects as a DB later undereath ActiveRecord and Arel.

DataObjects (DO) has support for MySQL, SQLite3, PostgreSQL and several other DBs. It supports Ruby 1.8.6 through 1.9.2. It also has encoding support on 1.9. It works with JRuby and even Rubinius (!). The windows MRI gem is a “fat binary” allowing the same gem to work with 1.8 and 1.9. It has non-blocking support like neverblock. It is supported by DataMapper and Sequel, and DM has been using it for well over 2 years. The gem installation command is the same across all versions and flavors of ruby. The interface is uniform across all the drivers It has an active developer community and great support. Oh, and it’s also extremely fast.

I could go on but you get the point. DO was 1.9 compatible over a year ago, while most of the other DB drivers are lagging behind the curve as Jeremy points out.

One of the DO developers (myabc) recently started porting Arel to work with DO: http://github.com/myabc/arel/tree/do — I know he’d appreciate some help from the community. Hop into #dm-hacking on IRC, and ask myabc, dbussink or myself (dkubb) what you can do to help.

By: Kevin Menard

Kevin Menard — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 22:28:40 +0000

Grimen:

I appreciate the response. But having to do that is also a bit absurd and illustrates why moving to 1.9 is a pain in the neck. It feels like death by a thousand cuts. Trust me, I’m not staying on 1.8 because I love the way the GC crashes. I’m staying there because it’s the most pragmatic thing to do.

By: Andrew Grimm

Andrew Grimm — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 22:18:46 +0000

I’m not a rails developer myself, but the assumption you have is that people will only upgrade their gems to 1.9 if you force them to do so. My experience is that people want to update their gems to 1.9, but are doing so in their copious free time.

By: grimen

grimen — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 20:25:03 +0000

1.9 only, totally agree – most Ruby devs I know re afraid of 1.9 for some reason. For the Ruby-cause!

Kevin Menard:

if RUBY_VERSION >= ’1.9′
config.gem ‘ruby-debug19′, :lib => ‘ruby-debug’
else
config.gem ‘ruby-debug’
end

jc: It’s web platform beta; use on own risk.