Issue #4996 has been updated by Shyouhei Urabe.
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Hi folks, I'd like to make an official announcement about this topic on www.ruby-lang.org.
Can you take a look at this draft? I'm sure my English is bad.
Hello, and thank you for your getting into our community.
I know most of you more or less use version 1.8.7 of Ruby today. It
was released in 2008 and was a state-of-art Ruby release back then.
-- I am proud to say it is no longer. Ruby's core developers have
been actively working on their new versions, 1.9, and they are about
to release new 1.9.3. I have been using 1.9 for years and now I
cannot go back to the days without it. Rich features. Faster
execution. Rubygems integrated. Rails works perfectly. I cannot but
say it is totally wonderful. Everyone please, use 1.9.
But at the same time I know you cannot switch to 1.9 right now for
various reasons. Maybe you have already been deployed your
application with 1.8.7. Maybe you use a 3rd party library and that is
for 1.8.7 only. Or maybe your Linux distribution only supports 1.8.7.
So I hereby announce you how long you can stick to it. It is OK you
are using 1.8.7 today but after a while, it will be shut down.
Please be ready.
Schedule:
* We continue to provide normal maintenance for 1.8.7 as usual, until
June 2012. You can safely assume we provide bugfixes and no
incompatibility shall be introduced.
* After that we stop bugfixes. We still provide security fixes until
June 2013, in case you are still using 1.8.7.
* We will no longer support 1.8.7 in all senses after June 2013.
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Feature #4996: About 1.8.7 EOL
http://redmine.ruby-lang.org/issues/4996
Author: Shyouhei Urabe
Status: Open
Priority: Normal
Assignee:
Category: core
Target version:
No, not now. Don't worry. But we have to start talking about this
topic: when and how 1.8.7 should die.
"You should really use 1.9". I have said this again and again and now
repeat it once more. As we're about to release 1.9.3 I can't but say
it is, totally wonderful. Rich features. Faster execution. Rubygems
integrated. Rails works perfectly. I've been using 1.9 for years and
now I can't go back to the days without it.
So why there's still 1.8.7? It's also clear: for system admins. So
far 1.8.7 has been adopted widely because it was a state of art ruby
implementation of the day it was released. Even after you stop
writing software for something, it needs bugfixes and maintenance
releases. For ruby 1.8.7 , that's what I'd been offering for these
three years.
Now... I know many of you're still developing your software against
1.8.7 in spite of its dead-endedness. Sooner or later the whole Ruby
community will move towards 1.9 and those 1.8.7-based systems are
expected to become unmaintained. I don't like the situation. I want
you and your system to be 1.9 ready.
So to encourage your moving towards 1.9, I think I should define
1.8.7's end-of-life to be at some point in the future. I guess you're
not moving to 1.9 because 1.8 is (or at least seems to be) maintained.
Let's stop it. We will no longer touch 1.8.7 in any way once after
the EOL. right?
My current timeline (to be rescheduled) is:
- Normal maintenance (as it is today): provided until June 2012,
- Security fixes: provided until June 2013.
Give us your opinioms.
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http://redmine.ruby-lang.org