Is it feasible to use Ruby 1.9 for Rails yet?

Question

I've read that Ruby 1.9 is a lot faster than 1.8, however it seems like it hasn't become the standard in the Rails community yet. What are the pros and cons of using Ruby 1.9 for new apps?

Edit to say: What I found confusing was that while its not officially recommended, it seems like 2.3 brought compatibility. Just wondering if people have any real world experience of attempting large sites in 1.9.

Also: Any large gotchas to be found in starting an app in 1.8 and upgrading to 1.9 at a later date..

Answer 1

No, it is not recommended yet. From Ruby on Rails: Download:

We recommend Ruby 1.8.7 for use with Rails.

Pros:

The speed and other improvements that come along with a new, faster version.

Cons:

It is unsupported, and as such you will have unpredictable results.

Answer 2

As far as I know, Rails runs fine (and fast) on 1.9. It is a much better intepreter. That said, the disadvantage is that plugin and third party library support is still not quite there. Look into the needs of your app and check to make sure that any plugins you need support 1.9.

Answer 3

Rails itself runs great, the real problem is with the gems and plugins

You can look at www.isitruby19.com to check what other peoples problems with them are

Answer 4

The current release of Rails (2.3.2) should work just fine with Ruby 1.9, and Rails 3.0 should have no problem.

That being said, the adoption of Ruby 1.9 for use with Rails is more a social problem than a technical one right now. There's a chicken-and-egg situation with many Ruby gems and Rails plugins not being compatible with Ruby 1.9, which causes developers to not use 1.9, which in turn causes fewer patches to be released, etc, etc, etc...

Gregory Brown (author of the fantastic Prawn Ruby gem) gave a great talk recently at GoRuCo called "Where is Ruby Really heading?" that addresses these issues.

In short, Ruby 1.9 is a substantial leap forward for the language and platform, and it's essential that developers install it and being patching their libraries and dependencies in order to ensure more rapid adoption.

Whether it's already feasible for your needs is likely dependent on your app's dependencies and whether or not the time spent writing patches equates to the benefit of Ruby 1.9.