I humbly suggest that a prerequisite of 1.9.2 being released is that
it passes RubySpec.

1.9 HEAD currently has over 350 failures and 638 errors with RubySpec.
It is likely that many of these are caused by intentional changes
between 1.8 and 1.9, but it is equally likely that some represent
bugs. Until these tests pass we simply won't know.

RubySpec is the best tool we have to understand the implications of
changes in the language and its libraries. Test failures not only help
discover bugs, but force us to clarify how we expect Ruby to work, and
its components to interact.

I appreciate that everybody on this list is busy with their own
projects, so I intend to do the majority of this work myself, with the
assistance of the other RubySpec contributors. I believe that I can
fix the failing 'core' and 'language' tests before Christmas. It is
unlikely that I'll be able to fix all of the 'library' tests as well.

To achieve this goal I need to ask a lot of questions, but wish to do
so in a way that neither floods ruby-core nor angers the core
committers. So I ask: how can I work best with the core team and
members of this list? I suspect that the best approach will be for me
to post my questions in this thread. That enables disinterested
parties to easily filter me out, while signposting questions for the
core team. I could even post bug reports here before filing them on
the tracker, if that would be easier. IOW, how can I annoy you the
least? :-)

The other thing that would help is an explanation of any general
principles of the 1.8 -> 1.9 changes. For example, one is that, in
general, methods that modify a String should preserve its encoding.
That's useful, because I can apply it to many test cases.

(If by some remote chance anybody reading this doesn't know about
RubySpec, see http://rubyspec.org/ , stop by #rubyspec, or e-mail me
off-list).

-- 
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