On Dec 25, 2007, at 1:31 PM, M. Edward (Ed) Borasky wrote:

> Yeah ... I'm with you on this one, having just discovered that two  
> gems,
> rcov and hpricot, need to be updated to work with 1.9 anyhow. Should
> there be some kind of "master list" of the "commonly used gems" that
> need updating so they'll work with either 1.8 or 1.9? So far I have

My experience is that a whole bunch of gems are broken. Some fail  
explicitly, some just don't work properly.

I think this is bad PR just waiting to happen.

So, a suggestion.

 From now on, require that gems declare the version(s) of Ruby they  
run with. Have this default to 1.8 if not specified. Then have require 
() warn if loading a gem under 1.9 that doesn't explicitly say it  
runs on 1.9.

To start with, it'll be ugly, but it pushes the support effort onto  
gem maintainers, who are the best people to know what to do to add  
compatibility.

Without this, I really worry about the bad press we'll see (and the  
stuff that incompatible gems might accidentally mess up).



Dave