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Running two production applications on 5.1.5. It works swimmingly and I rarely need to touch it except for some additional feature requests or tweaks. Is it wo

Running two production applications on 5.1.5. It works swimmingly and I rarely need to touch it except for some additional feature requests or tweaks. Is it worth the headache of upgrading to 6.0? I'm looking at the change log and deprecations and nothing stands out as an issue but I think I still need to do 5.1.5 to 5.2 then to 6.0. Not to mention I'm not going to utilize any of the new upgrades.

cullenking 7y ago
Keeping your app up to date if you have any significant quantity of third party gems, is really nice. Meaning, if you need to upgrade, it's easier to stay on top of it than it is to pull an app from say, 4.2 to 6.0. This becomes particularly problematic a few years down the road, for security updates.
- SnowingXIV 7y ago
  That's the other concern, right now all the gems play nice together without issue. It's possible that some of the older gems are supported under 5.x and haven't made the required changes for 6.0.
  - bluedino 7y ago
    It's like upgrading Wordpress. Some plugin that the client LOVES doesn't work with teh newest version of WP because it's been abandoned.
rhizome 7y ago
Always upgrade by minor revision, since that's where the additions, deprecations, and removals happen.
ufmace 7y ago
I'd say it's worth doing, unless you intend to spin down the app entirely in a couple of years, just for the sake of security updates. You don't want to be in a situation where there's a vulnerability announced, and you can't pick up a fix without updating 6 versions, with all of the headaches that brings. It's worth devoting a few % of time here and there to bumping everything to the latest version and fixing any issues that come up, and maybe trying to move things that had been using external gems to any new internal processes that cover the same tasks.
- SnowingXIV 7y ago
  Good point. It's an app that's got a life left to it. Not much in the way of changes but it's a pretty critical piece of software. Cloned a copy, moving it to 5.2 and 6.0. Had to update ruby to 2.5.1. Looks like postgresql (which I use heavily) is also making comments about migrating data. This is not seamless. Lots of issues not to mention `rails app:update` basically wipes out the files, you go back in replace with needed info via diff, more errors. I thought that was supposed to alleviate that. If this works I'm hoping at least pushing to Heroku will handle that part. Heroku notes the gem file and makes the required updates.
jrochkind1 7y ago
I would say the answer to that for _any_ software that isn't under active development (you hardly ever touch it, you aren't adding new features) and _nearly_ any dependency upgrade is -- no, of course it's not worth it. EXCEPT that by not upgrading you are building technical debt, because eventually your dependencies will be unsupported, and have a severe security vulnerability, and nobody will be providing a patch. And they'll be hard to get running on modern OS's, etc. Or some _other_ dependency will have a severe security vulnerability, and will release a fix ... in a version that only works in Rails 6.0+. In fact, Rails 5.1 is _already_ out of support in the Rails maintenance policy, they do not commit to even releasing patches for severe security vulnerabilities in Rails 5.1. (They forgot to update the exact versions given as examples in the Maintenance Policy Guide, so you won't see it in the "released" Guide for Rails 6.0, but you can see it in the "edge" guide https://edgeguides.rubyonrails.org/maintenance_policy.html https://edgeguides.rubyonrails.org/maintenance_policy.html. And next time there's a Rails release, it'll be updated on guides.rubyonrails.org.) But will it make your software faster or more reliable to upgrade to Rails 6.0? Probably not. But this is how software works now, you build up technical debt just by standing still.
house9-2 7y ago
> Running two production applications on 5.1.5. I believe there are security vulnerabilities in that version. consider updating to a secure version: 5.1.7 is the latest revision of the 5.1.x series. https://weblog.rubyonrails.org/2019/3/13/Rails-4-2-5-1-5-1-6-2-have-been-released/ https://weblog.rubyonrails.org/2019/3/13/Rails-4-2-5-1-5-1-6...
- davidroetzel 7y ago
  Also, the 5.1 series will not receive any future security fixes now that 6.0 is out. So you could consider upgrading to 5.2 instead of 6.0. This is just one minor version step so should be less daunting. And 5.2 will receive security updates for a while yet.
thirdsun 7y ago
> Is it worth the headache of upgrading to 6.0? Always. At the very least simply because the headaches that accompany those upgrade paths will be significantly bigger once you skip a version or two and finally want to jump to 7.0 or 8.0. Instead upgrade while it's relatively painless.

cullenking 7y ago

Keeping your app up to date if you have any significant quantity of third party gems, is really nice. Meaning, if you need to upgrade, it's easier to stay on top of it than it is to pull an app from say, 4.2 to 6.0. This becomes particularly problematic a few years down the road, for security updates.

SnowingXIV 7y ago
That's the other concern, right now all the gems play nice together without issue. It's possible that some of the older gems are supported under 5.x and haven't made the required changes for 6.0.
- bluedino 7y ago
  It's like upgrading Wordpress. Some plugin that the client LOVES doesn't work with teh newest version of WP because it's been abandoned.

rhizome 7y ago

Always upgrade by minor revision, since that's where the additions, deprecations, and removals happen.

ufmace 7y ago

I'd say it's worth doing, unless you intend to spin down the app entirely in a couple of years, just for the sake of security updates. You don't want to be in a situation where there's a vulnerability announced, and you can't pick up a fix without updating 6 versions, with all of the headaches that brings. It's worth devoting a few % of time here and there to bumping everything to the latest version and fixing any issues that come up, and maybe trying to move things that had been using external gems to any new internal processes that cover the same tasks.

SnowingXIV 7y ago
Good point. It's an app that's got a life left to it. Not much in the way of changes but it's a pretty critical piece of software. Cloned a copy, moving it to 5.2 and 6.0. Had to update ruby to 2.5.1. Looks like postgresql (which I use heavily) is also making comments about migrating data. This is not seamless. Lots of issues not to mention `rails app:update` basically wipes out the files, you go back in replace with needed info via diff, more errors. I thought that was supposed to alleviate that. If this works I'm hoping at least pushing to Heroku will handle that part. Heroku notes the gem file and makes the required updates.

jrochkind1 7y ago

I would say the answer to that for _any_ software that isn't under active development (you hardly ever touch it, you aren't adding new features) and _nearly_ any dependency upgrade is -- no, of course it's not worth it. EXCEPT that by not upgrading you are building technical debt, because eventually your dependencies will be unsupported, and have a severe security vulnerability, and nobody will be providing a patch. And they'll be hard to get running on modern OS's, etc. Or some _other_ dependency will have a severe security vulnerability, and will release a fix ... in a version that only works in Rails 6.0+. In fact, Rails 5.1 is _already_ out of support in the Rails maintenance policy, they do not commit to even releasing patches for severe security vulnerabilities in Rails 5.1. (They forgot to update the exact versions given as examples in the Maintenance Policy Guide, so you won't see it in the "released" Guide for Rails 6.0, but you can see it in the "edge" guide https://edgeguides.rubyonrails.org/maintenance_policy.html https://edgeguides.rubyonrails.org/maintenance_policy.html. And next time there's a Rails release, it'll be updated on guides.rubyonrails.org.) But will it make your software faster or more reliable to upgrade to Rails 6.0? Probably not. But this is how software works now, you build up technical debt just by standing still.

house9-2 7y ago

> Running two production applications on 5.1.5. I believe there are security vulnerabilities in that version. consider updating to a secure version: 5.1.7 is the latest revision of the 5.1.x series. https://weblog.rubyonrails.org/2019/3/13/Rails-4-2-5-1-5-1-6-2-have-been-released/ https://weblog.rubyonrails.org/2019/3/13/Rails-4-2-5-1-5-1-6...

davidroetzel 7y ago
Also, the 5.1 series will not receive any future security fixes now that 6.0 is out. So you could consider upgrading to 5.2 instead of 6.0. This is just one minor version step so should be less daunting. And 5.2 will receive security updates for a while yet.

thirdsun 7y ago

> Is it worth the headache of upgrading to 6.0? Always. At the very least simply because the headaches that accompany those upgrade paths will be significantly bigger once you skip a version or two and finally want to jump to 7.0 or 8.0. Instead upgrade while it's relatively painless.