On Apr 16, 11:09 am, Florian Gilcher <f... / andersground.net> wrote:
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> I'm citing a message from talk, but I think it better fits into core:
>
> On Apr 16, 2008, at 4:40 AM, Pena, Botp wrote:
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> > chuck-full, this looks like ruby1.9 without the vm :)
>
> Thats pretty much why i'm not looking forward to the 1.8.7 release.
>
> Ruby 1.8 is the major ruby version that is marked production-ready.
> While there are cases where changes are necessary, this should mean
> that the API is stable - at least when it comes to core classes, but
> to some extend, this should also be true for the standard library. The
> core should be frozen.
>
> Those changes are not minor. While they are backwards-compatible, they
> severely break forward-compatibility between 1.8.6 and 1.8.7. While
> those changes are nice, it gets increasingly hard to track what
> features a specific minor(!) core(!!) version of Ruby  actually
> supports. As there are still many interpreter installations out there
> that are not even  on 1.8.6-level those features are essentially
> useless. For example, some Linux packaging tools do not even install
> 1.8.6 (apt for example). If you target your code towards a minor
> version, you will  be in a world of pain. As developers often use the
> most recent version for development, chances are there that you run
> into that trap. You can multitest, but it artificially increases
> testing complexity. This is beginning to get a real problem when it
> comes to configuration management.
> Also, as we do have multiple interpreters for the standard-1.8.6-
> distribution, it breaks compatibility for those.

As much as I like having these changes, I feel somewhat the same way.
I just got through adding "if ruby 1.9" clauses to various part of
Facets, and now I will have to go back and add "if ruby 1.8.7"
clauses.

I'm torn. I'd rather just move on to 1.9 as fast as possible, in which
case I'd rather not see all these new features in 1.8.7. OTOH,  if 1.9
isn't really ready for production yet and won't be for a while, then
these features are better to have than not to have.

T.