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Is there a reason why Github runs on it's own fork of Rails (I believe it's 2.3 or something), when they could just upgrade to Rails 4, from the official Master

by neya 13y ago

Is there a reason why Github runs on it's own fork of Rails (I believe it's 2.3 or something), when they could just upgrade to Rails 4, from the official Master (which is faster and probably more stable AND most importantly with most security bugs fixed)?? Pardon me if I sound stupid, I'm just trying to understand why.

davidw 13y ago
The Rails 2.3 -> 3 upgrade is not exactly a walk in the park.
chc 13y ago
"Just upgrade to Rails 4." Five words, months and months of hair loss. There is a lot less radical change and a lot more focus on compatibility in Rails nowadays, and yet upgrading a substantial app to a new version of Rails is still a shaky proposition. For a lot of companies, the gigantic leap from 2.3 to 3 was more trouble than just paying somebody to maintain 2.3.
freedrull 13y ago
I believe they have upgraded to 3, thanks to @tmm1. It was mentioned in some talk, probably by Zach Holman.
- bnferguson 13y ago
  Significant work has been done by tmm1, rsanheim and a host of others, but it's not complete yet. Basically, the work is on-going and pretty amazing to watch!
kneath 13y ago
From my perspective, there have been a few different reasons why we haven't just upgraded: 1. Time spent upgrading Rails is time not spent building awesome things for our customers to use. We're extremely customer focused. 2. Performance is also a huge concern of ours. Over the past few years we've driven response times down dramatically. Upgrading Rails not only presents a slower framework (Rails 3/4 is not faster than 2.3), but a different architecture — changing where our performance chokes are. We'd have to do a ton of work on this front just to keep performance steady. Again, time spent here is time not spent making our existing infrastructure faster. 3. We've spent the past three years working on upgrading the stack. It's not so black and white — we have many of the benefits of newer rails without needing to upgrade everything. There has been a lot of effort here. In my own personal experience, upgrading frameworks is generally the fastest way to create bugs and work on the opposite of customer impact. I don't think you should feel like you have to be on the bleeding edge.
- wasd 13y ago
  As per number 2, are these GH specific or can they be sent upstream?
  - bnferguson 13y ago
    Not completely sure all the blockers but I think it may have to do with 2.3 being in maintenance mode (may even be unsupported at this point). Either way, being able to contribute back is definitely one of the things people are looking forward to about being on a current version. I've heard a few mention they'd love to be able to send any Rails performance bits upstream much like we see with the Ruby patches lately.
- neya 13y ago
  Thank you, that was informative :)

by neya 13y ago

davidw 13y ago

The Rails 2.3 -> 3 upgrade is not exactly a walk in the park.

chc 13y ago

"Just upgrade to Rails 4." Five words, months and months of hair loss. There is a lot less radical change and a lot more focus on compatibility in Rails nowadays, and yet upgrading a substantial app to a new version of Rails is still a shaky proposition. For a lot of companies, the gigantic leap from 2.3 to 3 was more trouble than just paying somebody to maintain 2.3.

freedrull 13y ago

I believe they have upgraded to 3, thanks to @tmm1. It was mentioned in some talk, probably by Zach Holman.

bnferguson 13y ago
Significant work has been done by tmm1, rsanheim and a host of others, but it's not complete yet. Basically, the work is on-going and pretty amazing to watch!

kneath 13y ago

From my perspective, there have been a few different reasons why we haven't just upgraded: 1. Time spent upgrading Rails is time not spent building awesome things for our customers to use. We're extremely customer focused. 2. Performance is also a huge concern of ours. Over the past few years we've driven response times down dramatically. Upgrading Rails not only presents a slower framework (Rails 3/4 is not faster than 2.3), but a different architecture — changing where our performance chokes are. We'd have to do a ton of work on this front just to keep performance steady. Again, time spent here is time not spent making our existing infrastructure faster. 3. We've spent the past three years working on upgrading the stack. It's not so black and white — we have many of the benefits of newer rails without needing to upgrade everything. There has been a lot of effort here. In my own personal experience, upgrading frameworks is generally the fastest way to create bugs and work on the opposite of customer impact. I don't think you should feel like you have to be on the bleeding edge.

wasd 13y ago
As per number 2, are these GH specific or can they be sent upstream?
- bnferguson 13y ago
  Not completely sure all the blockers but I think it may have to do with 2.3 being in maintenance mode (may even be unsupported at this point). Either way, being able to contribute back is definitely one of the things people are looking forward to about being on a current version. I've heard a few mention they'd love to be able to send any Rails performance bits upstream much like we see with the Ruby patches lately.
neya 13y ago
Thank you, that was informative :)