# If you are unhappy with the direction of Ruby 1.8.7+, respond **URL:** \ **Category:** Ruby\ **Created:** [February 11, 2009, 6:12pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/if-you-are-unhappy-with-the-direction-of-ruby-1-8-7-respond/160090 "2009-02-11T18:12:33Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![naething](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/n/e47774/32.png) [@naething](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/naething)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2009, 6:12pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/if-you-are-unhappy-with-the-direction-of-ruby-1-8-7-respond/160090/1 "2009-02-11T18:12:33Z")
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. If you agree with this, share your thoughts or at least a simple ‘+1’. If you disagree, please find the other thread titled ‘If you are happy with the direction of Ruby 1.8.7, respond’. If you are in the middle, I don’t know what you should do… write two posts? My goal is to survey ruby-talk so that the core Ruby team has a chance to see what people really want. I’m curious to see if this is as one-sided as I think it is. -greg ---
**Author:** ![naething](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/n/e47774/32.png) [@naething](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/naething)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2009, 6:29pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/if-you-are-unhappy-with-the-direction-of-ruby-1-8-7-respond/160090/2 "2009-02-11T18:29:36Z")
On Feb 11, 2009, at 11:10 AM, Gregory B. 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 G. II ---
**Author:** ![naething](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/n/e47774/32.png) [@naething](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/naething)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2009, 6:36pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/if-you-are-unhappy-with-the-direction-of-ruby-1-8-7-respond/160090/3 "2009-02-11T18:36:43Z")
2009/2/11 Gregory B. [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) > 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. If you agree with this, share your > thoughts or at least a simple ‘+1’. If you disagree, please find the > other thread titled ‘If you are happy with the direction of Ruby > 1.8.7, respond’. If you are in the middle, I don’t know what you > should do… write two posts? I’m not sure whose problem this really is, but it’s worth bearing in mind that in certain Linux package systems, there is just one ‘ruby1.8’ package and one ‘ruby1.9’ package, each of which ships the latest from that branch. The same goes for the ‘gem’ executable, so you only get one gem repo per ‘major’ version – you don’t get a 1.8.6 gem repo and a 1.8.7 repo, you just get one for all 1.8.x releases. Keeping 1.8.x back-compatible with prior 1.8.x seems like it would minimise confusion for a lot of people and reduce the burden of testing libraries against multiple Rubys. ---
**Author:** ![naething](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/n/e47774/32.png) [@naething](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/naething)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2009, 6:40pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/if-you-are-unhappy-with-the-direction-of-ruby-1-8-7-respond/160090/4 "2009-02-11T18:40:49Z")
Gregory B. 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. If you agree with this, share your > thoughts or at least a simple ‘+1’. Gregory - thank you for raising this here. I read this ruby-core thread: [http://www.ruby-forum.com/topic/178191#new](http://www.ruby-forum.com/topic/178191#new) last night, and in particular Akinori MUSHA’s statement: “Yes. Backporting syntactic changes is a big part of the plan for ruby 1.8.8” Luckily I was in bed else I’d have fallen off my chair. This seems to me the most bonkers development plan I’ve seen in a long while. Stable releases are meant to be _stable_; minor point releases are meant to be _API compatible_, backwards and forwards. I can’t think of any other serious open-source project that would even contemplate adding random bits of syntax and API calls in minor releases. I expressed the same opinion at length and with some fervour regarding the release of 1.8.7: [http://www.ruby-forum.com/topic/150251#663291](http://www.ruby-forum.com/topic/150251#663291) so I won’t go on again. However one of the main reasons for allowing 1.8.7 to cherry-pick backports was that, at the time of the decision, (Nov 2006) 1.9.1 seemed a while off, and some didn’t want the language frozen until then. That seemed impatient to me then, but now there’s a release version of 1.9.1 on the table, I can see no justifcation at all. The progression to 1.9 isn’t that hard anyway; the language hasn’t changed so much. And I can’t see that having a whole load of incompatible 1.8.x mongrel releases washing about (as they end up in distros etc) helps anyway. Just to say again, I’m grateful for the work of the core developers and maintainers - but it seems like 1.8 branch is being treated like a personal playground rather than a stable version. There’s not even a statement of what features might be backported. Ooops, I’ve gone on at length again. Anyway, +1 for Ruby 1.8.8 being a bugfix release implementing the same API as 1.8.6 alex ---
**Author:** ![naething](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/n/e47774/32.png) [@naething](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/naething)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2009, 6:56pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/if-you-are-unhappy-with-the-direction-of-ruby-1-8-7-respond/160090/5 "2009-02-11T18:56:42Z")
I’ll write two posts. Now that 1.9.1 is released, hopefully people will start porting to it, and 1.8 can remain stable. For the people who still need all their old gems to work, there should be a stable version – apparently, 1.8.7 broke a lot of things. On top of which, if 1.8.8 is an easier upgrade than 1.9, people won’t be as encouraged to port to 1.9. ---
**Author:** ![naething](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/n/e47774/32.png) [@naething](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/naething)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2009, 6:43pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/if-you-are-unhappy-with-the-direction-of-ruby-1-8-7-respond/160090/6 "2009-02-11T18:43:10Z")
+1 1.8 should keep its final branch release as fully 1.8 compatible for posterity. (Keep it legacy compatible) Ventures into the future can take place inside the Newer 1.9 and 2.0 branches without breaking what we could call “1.8 Legacy” code. 2009/2/11 James G. [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) ---
**Author:** ![naething](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/n/e47774/32.png) [@naething](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/naething)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2009, 7:41pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/if-you-are-unhappy-with-the-direction-of-ruby-1-8-7-respond/160090/7 "2009-02-11T19:41:58Z")
I’ve posted my opinions on Ruby-Core, but I’ll summarize them here: 1. The Ruby community should proceed with all deliberate speed towards ISO standardization of the language. 2. There are two “de facto” standards for the Ruby language at present. a. Ruby 1.8.6 as documented in the Pickaxe, Second Edition b. Ruby 1.9.1 as documented in “The Well-Grounded Rubyist”, “Programming Ruby 1.9” and “The Ruby P.ming Language”. 3. I don’t think it matters what the numbers are, but since the two “de facto” standard versions have designated numbers already, why not keep them as they are? 4. Since I don’t personally have a large installed base of Ruby code, I am going to use 1.9.1 whenever possible to a. Take advantage of the YARV engine. b. Put some mileage on the implementation, shake out the documentation, performance tune, etc. – M. Edward (Ed) Borasky I’ve never met a happy clam. In fact, most of them were pretty steamed. ---
**Author:** ![naething](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/n/e47774/32.png) [@naething](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/naething)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2009, 7:27pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/if-you-are-unhappy-with-the-direction-of-ruby-1-8-7-respond/160090/8 "2009-02-11T19:27:50Z")
I wrote it on ruby-core and I write it again: I’m very worried and confused with Ruby versioning policy. I’m very unhappy with all 1.8.7 and possibly 1.8.8 version. +1 – Pozdrawiam Rados³aw Bu³at [http://radarek.jogger.pl](http://radarek.jogger.pl) - mój blog ---
**Author:** ![naething](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/n/e47774/32.png) [@naething](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/naething)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2009, 7:44pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/if-you-are-unhappy-with-the-direction-of-ruby-1-8-7-respond/160090/9 "2009-02-11T19:44:20Z")
I’ve posted my opinions on Ruby-Core, but I’ll summarize them here: 1. The Ruby community should proceed with all deliberate speed towards ISO standardization of the language. 2. There are two “de facto” standards for the Ruby language at present. a. Ruby 1.8.6 as documented in the Pickaxe, Second Edition b. Ruby 1.9.1 as documented in “The Well-Grounded Rubyist”, “Programming Ruby 1.9” and “The Ruby P.ming Language”. 3. I don’t think it matters what the numbers are, but since the two “de facto” standard versions have designated numbers already, why not keep them as they are? 4. Since I don’t personally have a large installed base of Ruby code, I am going to use 1.9.1 whenever possible to a. Take advantage of the YARV engine. b. Put some mileage on the implementation, shake out the documentation, performance tune, etc. – M. Edward (Ed) Borasky I’ve never met a happy clam. In fact, most of them were pretty steamed. ---
**Author:** ![naething](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/n/e47774/32.png) [@naething](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/naething)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2009, 7:43pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/if-you-are-unhappy-with-the-direction-of-ruby-1-8-7-respond/160090/10 "2009-02-11T19:43:10Z")
I’ve posted my opinions on Ruby-Core, but I’ll summarize them here: 1. The Ruby community should proceed with all deliberate speed towards ISO standardization of the language. 2. There are two “de facto” standards for the Ruby language at present. a. Ruby 1.8.6 as documented in the Pickaxe, Second Edition b. Ruby 1.9.1 as documented in “The Well-Grounded Rubyist”, “Programming Ruby 1.9” and “The Ruby P.ming Language”. 3. I don’t think it matters what the numbers are, but since the two “de facto” standard versions have designated numbers already, why not keep them as they are? 4. Since I don’t personally have a large installed base of Ruby code, I am going to use 1.9.1 whenever possible to a. Take advantage of the YARV engine. b. Put some mileage on the implementation, shake out the documentation, performance tune, etc. – M. Edward (Ed) Borasky I’ve never met a happy clam. In fact, most of them were pretty steamed. ---
**Author:** ![naething](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/n/e47774/32.png) [@naething](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/naething)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2009, 7:55pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/if-you-are-unhappy-with-the-direction-of-ruby-1-8-7-respond/160090/11 "2009-02-11T19:55:29Z")
+1 #include – Aaron T. [http://synfin.net/](http://synfin.net/) [http://tcpreplay.synfin.net/](http://tcpreplay.synfin.net/) - Pcap editing and replay tools for Unix & Windows Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety. – Benjamin Franklin ---
**Author:** ![naething](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/n/e47774/32.png) [@naething](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/naething)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2009, 7:49pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/if-you-are-unhappy-with-the-direction-of-ruby-1-8-7-respond/160090/12 "2009-02-11T19:49:33Z")
I’m very unhappy. Come on people! Use standard versioning: 1.MAJOR\_VERSION.MINOR\_VERSION Should mean that after each MINOR\_VERSION change I won’t loose compatibility of my code, and only known bugs will be fixed or performance improved! Backporting is unnecesary and confusing. Most people will stay on 1.8.6 (including me on my servers) until most of applications will work with 1.9.1. Leave alone 1.8 branch, don’t do such stupid things like You want to!! +1 is not enough! +666! ;} ---
**Author:** ![naething](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/n/e47774/32.png) [@naething](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/naething)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2009, 8:02pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/if-you-are-unhappy-with-the-direction-of-ruby-1-8-7-respond/160090/13 "2009-02-11T20:02:00Z")
As a new Ruby user coming to the language, I’ve found it fairly confusing as to which Ruby I should be using. I understand that 1.8.6 via Pickaxe is a standard and so is 1.9.1 via David Black’s upcoming book. Coming from other projects, it would seem to me that making changes to 1.8.x that aren’t backwards compatible is a confusing message. I don’t like the idea of have parts of 1.8.x incompatible with the rest of it. Thats nonsense. +42 for not breaking backwards compatibility. 1.8.x made it this far, no need to introduce changes that are already in place in 1.9.x. -Zac ---
**Author:** ![naething](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/n/e47774/32.png) [@naething](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/naething)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2009, 8:11pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/if-you-are-unhappy-with-the-direction-of-ruby-1-8-7-respond/160090/14 "2009-02-11T20:11:26Z")
At work, we’ve already been bitten by 1.8.6 -\> 1.8.7 problems. I can’t tell you how much I don’t want to see 1.8.8 move even further away from 1.8.6. Please, leave the 1.8 line as compatible as possible, leave the API breakage to the 1.8 -\> 1.9 migration. ---
**Author:** ![naething](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/n/e47774/32.png) [@naething](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/naething)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2009, 8:05pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/if-you-are-unhappy-with-the-direction-of-ruby-1-8-7-respond/160090/15 "2009-02-11T20:05:32Z")
+1 I had a brief foray into 1.8.7 and had problems deploying code to some servers that were running 1.8.6 so now use 1.8.6. Will switch to 1.9.x when all the stuff I need works with it, but until then I’d really appreciate a proper and consistent 1.8.x branch that didn’t diverge into being a halfway house. Backported stuff isn’t what I want at all - when I want 1.9.x features (and everything works with them) I’ll move to 1.9 but please leave 1.8 alone! Rupert ---
**Author:** ![naething](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/n/e47774/32.png) [@naething](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/naething)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2009, 8:49pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/if-you-are-unhappy-with-the-direction-of-ruby-1-8-7-respond/160090/16 "2009-02-11T20:49:50Z")
On Thu, 12 Feb 2009, M. Edward (Ed) Borasky wrote: > I’ve posted my opinions on Ruby-Core, but I’ll summarize them here: > > 1. The Ruby community should proceed with all deliberate speed towards > ISO standardization of the language. Yeah, look what it did to Forth. – Matt It’s not what I know that counts. It’s what I can remember in time to use. ---
**Author:** ![naething](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/n/e47774/32.png) [@naething](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/naething)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2009, 8:40pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/if-you-are-unhappy-with-the-direction-of-ruby-1-8-7-respond/160090/17 "2009-02-11T20:40:59Z")
> Now that 1.9.1 is released, hopefully people will start porting to it, > and 1.8 can remain stable. For the people who still need all their old > gems to work, there should be a stable version – apparently, 1.8.7 > broke a lot of things. If it has to use parts of the new parser, can it use Ripper?? ---
**Author:** ![naething](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/n/e47774/32.png) [@naething](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/naething)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2009, 8:57pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/if-you-are-unhappy-with-the-direction-of-ruby-1-8-7-respond/160090/18 "2009-02-11T20:57:31Z")
On Wed, Feb 11, 2009 at 2:47 PM, Matt L. [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote: > On Thu, 12 Feb 2009, M. Edward (Ed) Borasky wrote: > > > I’ve posted my opinions on Ruby-Core, but I’ll summarize them here: > > > > 1. The Ruby community should proceed with all deliberate speed towards > > ISO standardization of the language. > > Yeah, look what it did to Forth. Don’t just say it, show it. [http://vividpicture.com/aleks/atari/forth.jpg](http://vividpicture.com/aleks/atari/forth.jpg) -greg ---
**Author:** ![naething](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/n/e47774/32.png) [@naething](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/naething)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2009, 9:06pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/if-you-are-unhappy-with-the-direction-of-ruby-1-8-7-respond/160090/19 "2009-02-11T21:06:56Z")
Gregory B. wrote: > My goal is to survey ruby-talk so that the core Ruby team has a chance > to see what people really want. I’m curious to see if this is as > one-sided as I think it is. > > -greg +1 ---
**Author:** ![naething](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/n/e47774/32.png) [@naething](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/naething)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2009, 9:07pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/if-you-are-unhappy-with-the-direction-of-ruby-1-8-7-respond/160090/20 "2009-02-11T21:07:31Z")
Matt L. wrote: > On Thu, 12 Feb 2009, M. Edward (Ed) Borasky wrote: > > > I’ve posted my opinions on Ruby-Core, but I’ll summarize them here: > > > > 1. The Ruby community should proceed with all deliberate speed towards > > ISO standardization of the language. > > Yeah, look what it did to Forth. The process of ANS standardization focused the Forth community and produced a syntax and semantics that are well-regarded in today’s Forth community. I wouldn’t be using Forth today if it weren’t for the ANS standard! – M. Edward (Ed) Borasky I’ve never met a happy clam. In fact, most of them were pretty steamed. [Next page](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/if-you-are-unhappy-with-the-direction-of-ruby-1-8-7-respond/160090.md?page=2)