On Feb 11, 2009, at 11:10 AM, Gregory Brown wrote:

> I am setting up two threads in the hopes that we can see names
> attached to opinions about the decision to break backwards
> compatibility between Ruby 1.8.6 and Ruby 1.8.7+
> This one is for those who wish that Ruby 1.8 would go *back* to being
> 1.8.6 compatible in Ruby 1.8.8.

I'm bothered by the new versioning scheme.

The new releases involve big changes and even if they are fully  
backwards compatible about what they will run, they are still creating  
pretty big compatibility gaps.  Code using any of the new 1.8.7  
features won't run on 1.8.6 and lower.  It sounds as if 1.8.8 intends  
to take this farther, so code written to that won't work in the  
different 1.8.7 branch or the earlier 1.8.6 and lower stuff.  Thus I  
feel we now have three different versions of Ruby 1.8 on the table  
(counting the not yet released 1.8.8).

James Edward Gray II