Is Rails-2.3 stable? Does anyone have any problems with it?

Question

Hello,
I want to develop an application in Ruby on Rails. I have used rails(vigorously) a couple of years ago. since then i haven't given it a try, i have been concentrating on core ruby. At that time, Rails(1.2.x) used to be a bit slow! so my problem is whether i should go for the earlier slower version or should i try newer versions... is it fast and STABLE? And does it have proper support for all the gems that were made for earlier versions?
Thanks

Answer 1

No problems with Rails 2.3 yet! No Problems with gems as well! Give it a try, it rocks! ;)

Answer 2

Compared to two years ago, you should be impressed with where Rails is at. Here are some things to take note of.

• mongrel is still fine as a server, but many (most?) people are using Phusion Passenger. I'm running a few apps in production mode with Passenger, and it's great. It plugs into Apache with a very small and simple set of directives. You won't have to set up balancers or rewriters like you used to.
• Phusion also offers RubyEE, which is their own, more efficient version of Ruby. The installer works in such a way that if you decide you don't like, it can be removed by simply deleting its directory. It's all self-contained.
• rmagick is still just as awful to install as it ever was, but now there is Paperclip as an alternative.
• You'll love how fast 2.3 loads the console.
• named_scopes are a huge step forward. Be sure to read up on them.

There are dozens of other reasons to upgrade, most of which can be found on this site. Unless you have an axe to grind with Rails, I doubt that you'll be disappointed with it.

Now, when you ask about stability, the answer is "sure, it's stable." However, you gave no information regarding what types of user loads you're trying to support. More detailed questions could lead to more detailed answers.

Edit Answering your comment. 10 Cool Things in Rails 2.3 by Luke Francl. This is a nice summary of the latest highlights.

Answer 3

2.3.4 is stable enough if you are running Ruby 1.8.6/7, not so much if you are running Ruby 1.9.1 (even though it should technically support it properly).

If you are going to run Ruby 1.9.1, good on you, the speed improvements are really good, however you will have to be aware that some things wont work as intended and will need some patching of either core Ruby or Rails.

Saying that I would still avoid REE. Anything that has malloc'd for me in development I wouldn't trust in production.