This post originated from an RSS feed registered with Ruby Buzz by Eric Hodel. Original Post: Ruby 1.8.6 Policy Feed Title: Segment7 Feed URL: http://blog.segment7.net/articles.rss Feed Description: Posts about and around Ruby, MetaRuby, ruby2c, ZenTest and work at The Robot Co-op. Latest Ruby Buzz Posts Latest Ruby Buzz Posts by Eric Hodel Latest Posts From Segment7

Ruby 1.8.6 is old and it's API is lacking the forward-compatibility that Ruby 1.8.7 has for moving to Ruby 1.9. Since I maintain two large ruby libraries that are shipped in 1.9 (RDoc and RubyGems) it is becoming hard to maintain 1.8.6 support inside them comfortably.

Currently I do not develop against 1.8.6 and correct operation on 1.8.6 is the last thing I investigate before release. Ensuring that my software works well in three versions of Ruby (1.8.6, 1.8.7 and 1.9.1) has become difficult. Supporting it in four once 1.9.2 is out will be too hard.

Ruby 1.8.7 offers many of the features of Ruby 1.9 making support for it fairly easy.

RubyGems 1.4.x will not support Ruby 1.8.6.

The RDoc 2.5.x releases do not guarantee support for Ruby 1.8.6.

Sorry Ruby 1.8.6, it's time to let you go.