On Apr 16, 2009, at 12:52 PM, Juan Zanos wrote:

> I'd like to start using Ruby 1.9 more often.  Often I could use the  
> extra performance.  However, I'm still concerned about bugs and  
> incompatibilities.   Is there a practical way to use 1.9 in such a  
> way that these potential problems are minimized?  I mostly use Linux  
> and OSX, and on rare occasions Windows.

One easy way is just to install 1.9 separate from your 1.8 install.   
You can do that by feeding the configure script a --program-suffix=19  
option which would add a 19 to the end of all the executables it  
installs.  Thus you would use ruby19, irb19, etc.

Hope that helps.

James Edward Gray II