Upgrading Ruby

Question

Is it time to upgrade to Ruby 1.9?

Answer 1

My short answer is:

"No".

My long answer is:

Version 1.9.1 is still a development branch. It is fun to play with, and you should play around if you are interested, but there is still a lot of shakeout going on. Many gems and libraries are still being adapted to it.

So yes to explore, no for production use.

Answer 2

At home, I'm writing code that runs under both 1.8 and 1.9 (eg declaring encoding and avoiding strings.each), and use 1.9 when it's faster, and switch back to 1.8 if I use a gem that doesn't like 1.9.

But to use a snowclone, "Don't try this at work".

Answer 3

There's a good site that details the compatibility of various gems with Ruby 1.9 called http://isitruby19.com.

I wrote a guide for Ruby 1.9.1-related stuff which you may be interested in. It shows you how to edit the libraries to get them to work on your system.