# Do Rails/gems updates break applications?

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/do-rails-gems-updates-break-applications/188094>\
**Category:** Ruby\
**Created:** [May 5, 2010, 5:11pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/do-rails-gems-updates-break-applications/188094 "2010-05-05T17:11:44Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 6\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![enos76](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/e/77aa72/32.png) [@enos76](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/enos76)\
**Post date:** [May 5, 2010, 5:11pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/do-rails-gems-updates-break-applications/188094/1 "2010-05-05T17:11:44Z")

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Some time ago I started experimenting with Ruby on Rails.  
I stopped almost immediately, because after updating gems or Rails  
itself, I often ended up with non-working applications.

I was not the only one with such problems.  
Recently I also saw a conference by the founder of Rails, who stated  
that  
revolutionary ideas that could brake old applications could have been  
considered for Rails 3.

How do professional Rails developers cope with such issues?

Thanks,  
Regards

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**Author:** ![enos76](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/e/77aa72/32.png) [@enos76](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/enos76)\
**Post date:** [May 5, 2010, 5:16pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/do-rails-gems-updates-break-applications/188094/2 "2010-05-05T17:16:26Z")

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On Wed, May 5, 2010 at 9:05 AM, enos76 [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote:

> Thanks,  
> Regards
> 
> –  
> Enos

This is a question you will probably want to ask the Rails mailing  
list instead of the Ruby mailing list, Ruby is not Rails™ 🙂

However, this problem has not been my experience working with Rails 2.  
Gem updates and Rails updates have rarely broken my apps, and the few  
code changes I have needed have been well-documented.

-Jonathan N.

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**Author:** ![enos76](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/e/77aa72/32.png) [@enos76](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/enos76)\
**Post date:** [May 5, 2010, 5:30pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/do-rails-gems-updates-break-applications/188094/3 "2010-05-05T17:30:29Z")

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Jonathan N. wrote:

> […] Gem updates and Rails updates have rarely broken my apps, and the  
> few code changes I have needed have been well-documented.

Let’s say you must reinstall a server, or migrate many old applications  
into a single machine. In such case, could it be that you would have to  
fix their code?

(last question then I migrate to the Rails mailing list I promise :-P)

Thanks, bye

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![enos76](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/e/77aa72/32.png) [@enos76](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/enos76)\
**Post date:** [May 5, 2010, 5:41pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/do-rails-gems-updates-break-applications/188094/4 "2010-05-05T17:41:36Z")

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I know this more of a Rails specific question but I’ll answer it  
anyways.

Typically in our development environment, we choose a set of  
gems/plugins  
and ruby/rails version to stick with, in our case its Ruby 1.8.7 with  
Rails  
2.3.5. When we choose our gems/plugins, we always pay attention to the  
versions and stick with it.

In your environment.rb file in the config directory, when we require the  
gem  
in particular, we also set the params to include the version number and  
sometimes the source. this needs t obe done because certain gems have  
dependencies and though one gem is updated, the dependency may or may  
not  
be. i.e. in a recent application I used the gem httparty version 0.4.3  
and  
bitly version 0.4.0 which both have a dependency on the gem crack  
version  
0.1.1. when i installed another gem, it installed crack 0.1.4 which was  
getting called instead of 0.1.1 and broke httparty and bitly which broke  
the  
app. These are difficult things to bridge the gap on and I ended up  
dumping  
the newer gem that I was using and finding a different means.

With having the community create and publish all these gems and plugins,  
you  
really have to analyze the dependencies and chances are when you run a  
sudo  
gem update, it will break your app and youll have to find a different  
way to  
cope. As a developer, finding a design pattern for setting up your  
environment is a necessity as well as being strictly specific in your  
environment.rb

example:

Rails::Initializer.run do |config|

config.gem “rack”, :version =\> ‘1.0.1’  
config.gem “rack-oauth”  
require “rack-oauth”  
config.middleware.use Rack::OAuth, :site =\> “[http://twitter.com](http://twitter.com)”, :key  
=\>  
$TWITTER\_TOKEN, :secret =\> $TWITTER\_SECRET, :redirect =\>  
“/twitter\_auth/complete”  
config.gem “hashie”, :version =\> ‘0.1.3’  
config.gem “crack”, :version =\> ‘0.1.1’  
config.gem “aws-s3”, :version =\> ‘0.6.2’, :lib =\> “aws/s3”

end

Hope this helps,

\_Kevin

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![enos76](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/e/77aa72/32.png) [@enos76](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/enos76)\
**Post date:** [May 5, 2010, 7:15pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/do-rails-gems-updates-break-applications/188094/5 "2010-05-05T19:15:53Z")

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Kevin Hopkins wrote:

> […] In your environment.rb file in the config directory, when we  
> require the gem in particular, we also set the params to include the  
> version number and sometimes the source […]

> […] when you set it up explicitly, you will be requiring the certain  
> versions and libraries. When you need to migrate the app, boom, run  
> rake gems:install […]
> 
> If your inheriting a project and have access to the previous server,  
> just run gem list and make a notation of the versions of the gems  
> installed. Then yo ucan run through the environment file […]

Exactly what I needed to know. Now after doing a little research on gem  
version coexistence I will be ready to go.

Many thanks.

Bye,

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![enos76](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/e/77aa72/32.png) [@enos76](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/enos76)\
**Post date:** [May 5, 2010, 5:45pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/do-rails-gems-updates-break-applications/188094/6 "2010-05-05T17:45:07Z")

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To answer this question, check out my previous email about the  
environment.rb config. when you set it up explicitly, you will be  
requiring  
the certain versions and libraries. When you need to migrate the app,  
boom,  
run rake gems:install or rake gems:unpack and it will either download  
and  
install or simply unpack from vendor the correct version of the gems you  
need.

If your inheriting a project and have access to the previous server,  
just  
run gem list and make a notation of the versions of the gems installed.  
Then yo ucan run through the environment file in that project and update  
the  
code to reflect the gems that were being used to simplify  
migrations/deployments in the future.

Hope this helps,

\_Kevin