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I can't seem to find any info on this... when will ruby 1.8.6 be 'retired'? ruby 1.8.7 is much more functional while maintaining syntax compatibility, and ruby 1.9.1 is significantly better all around... any idea when 1.8.6 will be retired?

Andrew Grimm
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Derick Bailey
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I don't think any versions of Ruby are ever formally retired. Things like Rails will eventually become incompatible, but older versions are always available.

People will continue using older versions of Ruby for a while. Forcing an upgrade is never easy.

Matchu
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  • yeah, but you don't see the 1.8.6 or 1.7.x installers featured on any websites like ruby-lang.org... makes me think there is a lifecycle of some sort going on. – Derick Bailey May 23 '10 at 19:59
  • @Derick Bailey: Yes, 1.8.6 is no longer considered a "current" version of Ruby by community, so in that sense you could say it is retired. But you seem to feel there's some more formal "retirement" forthcoming, but as Matchu said, it's really just a matter of more and more Rubyists not supporting it. – Chuck May 23 '10 at 22:41
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I suspect the main laggards with respect to ruby will be packaging systems for Linux.

When I was using Fedora Linux, I remember that ruby 1.9 was available for download from ruby-lang.org, but wasn't available as an RPM package (apart from source RPM).

Does anyone know about the status of ruby with the major Linux distributions?

Andrew Grimm
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Since RubyGems no longer officially supports 1.8.6 i think it's safe to say 1.8.6 is retired as of 'now'

see: http://blog.segment7.net/articles/2010/04/23/ruby-1-8-6-policy

horseyguy
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  • where did you hear that rubygems doesn't support 1.8.6? i just updated my gem installation to 1.3.7 on my ruby 1.8.6 without issue, and have been using it without issue. – Derick Bailey May 24 '10 at 16:02
  • ok... "RubyGems 1.4.x will not support Ruby 1.8.6. "... current version is 1.3.7...so it still supports ruby 1.8.6, but won't once the 1.4 rubygems is released. – Derick Bailey May 25 '10 at 01:38
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@andrewgrimm AFAIK Debian stable has 1.8.7 and 1.9.0, Debian testing has 1.8.7 and 1.9.1. Don't know about the others.

Anonymous scholar
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Hopefully not before I finish the Ruby book I'm reading (it's written to 1.8.6). I'd better finish that soon and then get up to date.

Grant Palin
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  • There are very few syntax changes between versions, from what I understand. Everything I've ever written for Ruby 1.8 works on 1.9. The only difference I've encountered is that hashes in 1.9 are ordered by default. – Matchu May 26 '10 at 15:33
  • Matchu: good to know. I've just read some roundups of changes from 1.8 to 1.9, and I'm not too concerned at this point. Time to just start writing code, I think. – Grant Palin May 28 '10 at 22:21