# Why is Ruby 1.8.6 RC1 more recent than Ruby 1.8.6 Final?

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/why-is-ruby-1-8-6-rc1-more-recent-than-ruby-1-8-6-final/180020>\
**Category:** Ruby\
**Created:** [December 9, 2009, 9:24pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/why-is-ruby-1-8-6-rc1-more-recent-than-ruby-1-8-6-final/180020 "2009-12-09T21:24:32Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![winterheat](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/w/7993a0/32.png) [@winterheat](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/winterheat)\
**Post date:** [December 9, 2009, 9:24pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/why-is-ruby-1-8-6-rc1-more-recent-than-ruby-1-8-6-final/180020/1 "2009-12-09T21:24:32Z")

</div>

Getting to the Ruby O.-click installer for Windows, we may go to

```
http://www.ruby-lang.org/en/downloads/

```

and then

```
http://rubyinstaller.org/download.html

```

however over there, it seems that

```
Ruby 1.8.6 RC1 (patchlevel 383)

```

is actually more recent than

```
Ruby 1.8.6 RC2 (patchlevel 27)

```

or

```
Ruby 1.8.6 Final (patchlevel 26)

```

If I install them on different machines, the RC1 actually shows a more  
recent date than RC2 or Final, by using

ruby -v

What’s the rule? Does it go strictly by patchlevel? That is, the  
patchlevel decides how update it is, instead of whether it is RC1, RC2,  
or Final?

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![winterheat](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/w/7993a0/32.png) [@winterheat](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/winterheat)\
**Post date:** [December 9, 2009, 10:52pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/why-is-ruby-1-8-6-rc1-more-recent-than-ruby-1-8-6-final/180020/2 "2009-12-09T22:52:40Z")

</div>

On Dec 9, 5:24 pm, Jian L. [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote:

> ```
> Ruby 1.8.6 RC1 (patchlevel 383)
> 
> ```
> 
> recent date than RC2 or Final, by using
> 
> ruby -v
> 
> What’s the rule? Does it go strictly by patchlevel? That is, the  
> patchlevel decides how update it is, instead of whether it is RC1, RC2,  
> or Final?

Here you’re talking about a set of Installers, not Ruby itself.

I’ve answered your question over Stackoverflow:

> <https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1876611/why-is-ruby-1-8-6-rc1-more-recent-than-ruby-1-8-6-final/1877105#1877105>

Which I’m going to copy here for the sake of help others find the  
information in the future:

"Hello,

Ruby-Lang website advertise a package of Ruby for Windows called One-  
Click Installer.

That installer used to have their own version schema, as you note with  
`186-26` or `186-27 RC2`

On RubyForge website (news section) you will find that efforts of the  
project as moved towards newer RubyInstaller packages, and is  
indicated there and the RubyInstaller download page that `186-27 RC2`  
is part of the legacy versions.

Latest RubyInstaller (currently in Release Candidate attempts) provide  
information of the correct Ruby version that includes and install, as  
indicated by the version string `1.8.6-p383` which is patchlevel 383  
of Ruby.

Please note that you’re comparing different type of packages. One-  
Click Installer versus RubyInstaller.

You can read more about this in the [wiki](http://wiki.github.com/oneclick/rubyinstaller) and the latest  
announcement [at RubyForge](http://rubyforge.org/forum/forum.php?forum_id=35591%22)

Hope this answer your questions.