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Ruby 1.8.7 retired

ruby-lang.org

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Re: Ruby 1.8.7 retired

#51
post #37

The whole ruby ecosystem is a nightmare for system administrators. Ubuntu/Debian still ships with ruby 1.8.7 and 1.9.1p0 (which is evil I heard). In order to install a new ruby version one has to most likely compile it from scratch: - Since there are no deb packages and there is no sane way to build deb packages - Overriding system ruby has to be avoided since we manage the whole infrastructure with puppet (yes you c…

Isn't it more Ubuntu/Debian's fault for shipping outdated versions of ruby than it is the ruby ecosystem's fault for simply having older versions ?

Nope. Ubuntu and Debian are not at fault. They have to pick a version of Ruby which runs the user applications that Ubuntu and Debian package, which will be kept working throughout the support period of the OS release. Everything else is secondary. They don't get to upgrade versions half-way through the release cycle, either.

This is why it's not realistic to expect to use the system ruby for development: that's not what it's there for.

It's also worth noting that the version of Ruby in current Debian Stable (which is 1.9.3-p194) will in all likelihood be deprecated by ruby-core 2 years before the next Debian Stable release. Again, this is fine for Debian, because they have taken on the responsibility of keeping working the user applications which rely on the system ruby.

If you're complaining about the system ruby being so out of date that you can't develop applications on it, you're doing it wrong. The system ruby isn't for you.

Re: Ruby 1.8.7 retired

#52
post #41
post #37

The whole ruby ecosystem is a nightmare for system administrators. Ubuntu/Debian still ships with ruby 1.8.7 and 1.9.1p0 (which is evil I heard). In order to install a new ruby version one has to most likely compile it from scratch: - Since there are no deb packages and there is no sane way to build deb packages - Overriding system ruby has to be avoided since we manage the whole infrastructure with puppet (yes you c…

Ubuntu/Debian does not ship with Ruby 1.9.1. They ship with Ruby 1.9.3 under the name of "ruby-1.9.1" because they are ABI compatible.

Ah yes, I was confused by the ABI level. They ship with 1.9.3p0 which you shouldn't use. The currently recommended version is 1.9.3p392 or p194...

Re: Ruby 1.8.7 retired

#53
post #37

The whole ruby ecosystem is a nightmare for system administrators. Ubuntu/Debian still ships with ruby 1.8.7 and 1.9.1p0 (which is evil I heard). In order to install a new ruby version one has to most likely compile it from scratch: - Since there are no deb packages and there is no sane way to build deb packages - Overriding system ruby has to be avoided since we manage the whole infrastructure with puppet (yes you c…

> The whole ruby ecosystem is a nightmare for system administrators.

It's getting better.

John Leach over at Brightbox has a ppa with up-to-date binary ruby packages: http://blog.brightbox.co.uk/posts/next-generation-ruby-packa... https://launchpad.net/~brightbox/+archive/ruby-ng-experiment...

I'd suggest giving them a go, and mirroring them inside your infrastructure if they work for you.

It's very annoying that checkinstall doesn't Just Work for recent ruby builds. If it did, I'd suggest that every time.

> It get's really interesting once you use puppet to install an RVM ruby version.

Yeah, don't do that.

Re: Ruby 1.8.7 retired

#54
post #8

My goodness, I have very little experience with Ruby and I'm currently in the process of trying to get a rails 3 app from github running on my osx system (1.8.7 default ruby version). I have spent the past several hours fighting with ruby versions and dependencies with the only glimmer of hope being successfully getting a hello world rails 4 app running. Seriously I thought ruby was supposed to be a beacon of simplic…

http://railsinstaller.org/ Made my life less of a headache when installing Ruby and Rails.

Re: Ruby 1.8.7 retired

#55
I love how he apologizes for his "limited" English and then drops a line like "[Ruby] 1.8.7 was the last scion of that clan." If that's "limited", then we're all in trouble.

Re: Ruby 1.8.7 retired

#56
post #52
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ubuntu/Debian does not ship with Ruby 1.9.1. They ship with Ruby 1.9.3 under the name of "ruby-1.9.1" because they are ABI compatible.

Ah yes, I was confused by the ABI level. They ship with 1.9.3p0 which you shouldn't use. The currently recommended version is 1.9.3p392 or p194...

Debian Wheezy (current stable) ships with Ruby 1.9.3-p194 + various patches [1].

[1] http://packages.debian.org/wheezy/ruby1.9.1

Re: Ruby 1.8.7 retired

#57
post #52
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ubuntu/Debian does not ship with Ruby 1.9.1. They ship with Ruby 1.9.3 under the name of "ruby-1.9.1" because they are ABI compatible.

Ah yes, I was confused by the ABI level. They ship with 1.9.3p0 which you shouldn't use. The currently recommended version is 1.9.3p392 or p194...

ubuntu 13.04 is ruby 1.9.3p194 which i believe was the default for 12.10 as well

Re: Ruby 1.8.7 retired

#58
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Install compilers on one machine, build Ruby, package it up as a deb/rpm/whatever, distribute to other machines.

Yep, that's the idea.

Sounds like an awful lot of work for no good reason I can think of.

You'll need a compiler, anyway, once you start trying to use any number of libraries requiring compiled C extensions.

"No compilers on production!" might be true elsewhere but I can't see any reason it applies for ruby deployments.

Re: Ruby 1.8.7 retired

#59
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, that's the idea.

Sounds like an awful lot of work for no good reason I can think of. You'll need a compiler, anyway, once you start trying to use any number of libraries requiring compiled C extensions. "No compilers on production!" might be true elsewhere but I can't see any reason it applies for ruby deployments.

> Sounds like an awful lot of work for no good reason I can think of.

Perfectly reproducible deploys and shutting down attack vectors are both very good reasons.

> You'll need a compiler, anyway, once you start trying to use any number of libraries requiring compiled C extensions.

Only if you're doing `gem install` in production. Guess what? That's not a particularly good idea either.

> "No compilers on production!" might be true elsewhere but I can't see any reason it applies for ruby deployments.

Ruby isn't special, or magic. It doesn't get a free pass "just because." If you've got reasons it should be exempt from the best practices that have been learnt elsewhere, let's hear them.

Re: Ruby 1.8.7 retired

#60
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah yes, I was confused by the ABI level. They ship with 1.9.3p0 which you shouldn't use. The currently recommended version is 1.9.3p392 or p194...

Debian Wheezy (current stable) ships with Ruby 1.9.3-p194 + various patches [1]. [1] http://packages.debian.org/wheezy/ruby1.9.1

Ah yes, we're currently running Ubuntu 12.04 LTS.
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