I’m working on a Rails 1 application. We’d like to upgrade it to Rails 3
or 4, but Rails 1 is so old that we think it would take a total rewrite
to upgrade. There are management and budget issues with a total rewrite.
We wouldn’t be able to deliver anything until the entire rewritten
application was finished.
So, we are searching for creative solutions to the upgrade problem. One
idea is to start rewriting the application in Rails 4 and run it
alongside the Rails 1 application. As features are added to the Rails 4
version, the same feature in the Rails 1 version could be taken offline.
Users would see a mix of the two versions. Some pages would be served by
Rails 1 and others by Rails 4.
This would require both the Rails 1 and Rails 4 versions to use the same
database.
So my question is, will this work? What problems with this approach
should we be anticipating? We know it isn’t a perfect solution, but
we’re hoping it’s good enough to drive the project forward.
The approach you have mentioned sounds incredibly risky, and a debugging
/
support nightmare! Assuming you have good tests in place, I think you’re
better off to upgrade from 1 -> 2, 2 -> 3 and then 3 -> 4.
Start by reading the release notes and the upgrade instructions from
each
of the major releases. Based on your knowledge of the application, that
would be a good place to start thinking about what sort of issues you’re
likely to face.
I think the only sensible scenario for running both apps side-by-side is
for testing purposes. Take a copy of your prod database and replicate
this
into a staging environment that you can test against.
This is likely to be far more efficient than a rewrite from scratch
approach, but the key is to minimise risk by doing lots of testing. If
you
haven’t already, make sure you have an issues list and good version
control!
One of the big issues you’re likely to run into is the Ruby change. If
you
have old code written for 1.8.6 (or even older!), you will find you will
have to make some changes to get it to play with Ruby 2.x. Again,
reading
the release notes and migration instructions will be invaluable. Do it
piece-by-piece so it’s manageable.