Session id in a rails 2.3 app

I’m in the process of converting an application from an older version of
rails to rails 2.3.2, and I’m running into some problems with my specs

There’s a part of the application that references the current session
ID;
non-optional there. It’s referenced in a before filter in
application_controller. Rails throws up some very big, loud deprication
warnings, to change the code from

session.session_id to request.session_options[:id]

However, when I do so, a whole crop of my specs start failing with an
error
evaluating nil.[] – request.session_options seems to be coming back
nil.
This seems to be the following bug in Rails:
https://rails.lighthouseapp.com/projects/8994/tickets/2268-rails-23-session_optionsid-problem

However, the suggested workaround does not actually help. any thoughts?