This Week in Edge Rails
Posted by Mike Gunderloy March 20, 2009 @ 02:52 PM
March 14, 2009 – March 20, 2009
The big news in Rails this week, of course, was the release of Rails 2.3. But that certainly doesn’t mean the Rails edge story is over! To the contrary, we’re embarking on one of the more ambitious and exciting Rails projects of all: the creation of Rails 3.0. Read on to see where things stand.
Final 2.3 Changes
A few things went in to Rails 2.3 in the days leading up to release. These include:
- DDL transactions for SQLite databases commit
- Compatibility between
render :fileandPathnamecommit - ActionController class naming conventions for Metal commit
Rails 2.3.2.1
Shortly after the release of Rails 2.3, which was version 2.3.2, it became necessary to make a Rails 2.3.2.1 tag. This is because the tagged 2.3.2 version in the Rails repository is actually missing an important fix (the installable gem version of Rails has the fix). The net result is that rake rails:freeze:edge RELEASE=2.3.2 would freeze a bad version of Rails into your application.
To fix this, the Rails team has re-tagged the master tree at a safer spot, after the critical fix. This new tag is for release 2.3.2.1. So if you’re freezing Rails 2.3 into your applications (as opposed to running it from gems) be sure to use rake rails:freeze:edge RELEASE=2.3.2.1. That .1 makes all the difference.
The Road to Rails 3.0
Now that 2.3 is out, what’s next? Rails 3.0, which has been a distant speck on the horizon for a while, is rapidly getting closer. The Rails core team is discussing exactly how to proceed, but the bottom line is that you are shortly going to see a lot of changes on edge Rails, as work that’s been going on in various forks gets merged back into the master branch. You’ll want to be cautious about using edge on existing applications. In particular, changes to the Rails internals may result in many plugins needing to be rewritten. Rails edge will continue to be the cutting-edge solution, but you’ll need to keep up with the changes and be prepared to work with them if you choose to run on edge.
But this doesn’t mean that Rails 2 is frozen in time either. There’s a new 2-3-stable branch in the Rails repository which will host any maintenance releases to the current release version. There will continue to be some work on making sure the 2.x releases of Rails work well, though the center of gravity of Rails framework development will shift quickly to Rails 3.0.
So stay tuned. We’ll continue to keep you posted with Rails 3.0 developments as they happen: the process will continue, as always, to be transparent and to welcome ideas and feedback.
Congrats!
It should be called: Rails 2.3.2.1.GO!
Thanks for the update. Very informative post.
Uhm i don’t understand.. actually on my linode i have rails 2.3.2 installed. Should i upgrade to 2.3.2.1 because the 2.3.2 is not safe? Thanks
Rails 2.3.2.1 doesn’t seem to have been pushed to RubyForge yet….
if we are going to start a new project, should we wait for 3.0 release ?
Mustafa: No, I think you shouldn’t wait for 3.0. I guess migration path will be smooth for 2.3 users :)
So if now my application is running with rails 2.3.2 it’s bad? I have to update to 2.3.2.1 version?
I downloaded with gem install rails…
@Marik
You are fine as long as you did not freeze Rails into your app initially. If you did, you’ll need to correct it. Otherwise, running it from gems has the fix already in it.
Thanks :)
There are currently 2 guides available for Rails. I am a PhP guy and would like to learn Rails 3.0 straight away.
Which guide should i use, so that eventually it will help me when Rails 3.0 arrives. I am confused between 2 guides version.
Just adding few more to the question above by Mr. Patrick. What is edge version:- http://guides.rails.info/
Will this change when it will approach Rails 3 or will it be getting advanced..?
Would love to know the right way.
http://guides.rubyonrails.org holds the guides for the current released version.
http://guides.rails.info holds the guides for edge Rails.
Right now, there is very little difference between the two, but they will diverge as time goes on. If you plan on running on edge, use the edge Guides. Right now, for a new learner, I’d start with release Guides.
Either way, you’ll be in good shape for Rails 3.0: think of it as evolution, not revolution.
the process will continue, as always, to be transparent and to welcome ideas and feedback
Where does this go on? I subscribe to the core list and haven’t seen any substantive discussion of what’s happening in 3.0. Does the discussion tend to happen on irc, or in campfire, and if the latter, are the logs publicly available?