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Am 02. September 2017 um 21:18 Uhr -0500 schrieb R0b0t1 <r030t1@×××××.com>: |
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> Seeing as the OP is saying there are 3 versions queued for merge and |
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> he has not installed any of them by hand it looks like Alan is |
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> right. Perhaps the OP is using "old" Ruby based software, but software |
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> of that age in another language could work on new interpreters. |
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|
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I took a moment and looked up the release announcements for the minor |
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version releases between the versions the OP has installed: |
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|
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* https://www.ruby-lang.org/en/news/2015/12/25/ruby-2-3-0-released/ |
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* https://www.ruby-lang.org/en/news/2016/12/25/ruby-2-4-0-released/ |
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|
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2.4.0 saw breaking changes, 2.3.0 not. In 2.4.0, the most notable |
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breaking change was the unification of Fixnum and Bignum into |
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Integer. Other breaking changes affected the standard library (stdlib): |
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|
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* Tk was dropped from the stdlib. |
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* XMLRPC was dropped from the stdlib. |
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* Support for OpenSSL <= 0.9.7 was dropped from the stdlib. |
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|
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For Tk specifically, the reason for the removal was that the maintainer |
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got demotivated by useless and even hostile feedback[1] and since nobody |
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wanted step up, the library was removed from the stdlib[2]. |
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|
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The exact judgement of how grave these changes are is subjective. Fixnum |
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and Bignum were not classes commonly used in Ruby code, so it may be |
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viewed as a detail. They saw a more frequent use in C extensions, which |
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may then be viewed more grave; the release announcement iself is pretty |
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clear on this topic: |
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|
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Ruby 2.4.0 release announcment from 2016-12-25: |
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> All C extensions which touch the Fixnum or Bignum class need to be |
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> fixed. |
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|
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I was not too happy with this either, but most software continued to |
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work. |
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|
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I don't know the reason why the OP was left with three versions of |
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Ruby. Given the above release announcements, there are not too many |
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reasons why his software should not work with newer versions of |
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Ruby. |
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|
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All this only applies to the core language. Some RubyGems packages |
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release very rigorously and some even make use of undocumented features |
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of (the C interface of) the Ruby language. That's however a different |
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problem. |
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|
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Am 02. September 2017 um 21:18 Uhr -0500 schrieb R0b0t1 <r030t1@×××××.com>: |
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> One of the reasons I dislike Ruby is that there is no complete |
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> specification of the language available, making this statement |
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> (technically) untestable. |
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|
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There *is* a formal complete ISO specification of the language available, |
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approved in 2012[3]. |
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|
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Marvin |
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|
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[1]: Exact reasoning of the maintainer is here (in reply to me): |
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http://blade.nagaokaut.ac.jp/cgi-bin/scat.rb/ruby/ruby-talk/436401 |
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[2]: https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/issues/8539 |
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[3]: https://www.iso.org/standard/59579.html |
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