9 ms·

Ruby 2.1.3 is released

115 points by matthewmacleod 12y ago

VeejayRampay 12y ago
A big thank you to all committers, Ruby keeps getting nicer and nicer with every release. Keep up the good work everyone!
colinbartlett 12y ago
Very nice! It looks like this might solve memory usage issues in low-memory environments such as cloud services like heroku? Stock Ruby 2.1 was unusable on heroku because of this issue. https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/issues/9607 https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/issues/9607
- thinkbohemian 12y ago
  Can confirm, I used this backport https://twitter.com/hone02/status/512254413000695808 https://twitter.com/hone02/status/512254413000695808 codetriage.com memory usage dropped by about 200mb, saw my request time drop and CPU load drop. Freaking amazing <3 <3 <3
- btown 12y ago
  Won't this put more weight in the "long tail" of response times for server applications, since the occasional full GC would stop the world after a thread or process had accepted a request and begun processing? Are there any response-time numbers for Rails sites in-the-wild running 2.1.3 vs. 2.1.2?
irmbrady 12y ago
Without being told to use a VM, installing Linux, buying a Mac, and without settling for the 2.0.0-p481 release of RubyInstaller; is there any way for a user to install this version of Ruby on Windows?
- vinceguidry 12y ago
  Personally I'd just hold out for awhile until the community updates everything. I personally am waiting for Brightbox to update their Ubuntu ppa packages before making the switch, as that's what all my production Ruby apps are running on.
- fdsary 12y ago
  I don't mean to come off as an ass, but just curious. Why do you want to develop ruby (or anything else) with windows? Especially since most servers (where ruby is popular) are linux servers? All colleagues I've had running windows always seem to have to jump so many hoops that the *nix crows don't. Also, no unix shell and package managers, how do you deal with it?
  - dragonwriter 12y ago
    > Also, no unix shell and package managers, how do you deal with it? There's shells for windows very similar to (some of which are ports of) unix shells, and chocolatey exists.
  - irmbrady 12y ago
    I have used Ubuntu and Mac OS in the past, but I am currently favouring doing all of my work on Windows. All of the tools I need run perfectly fine on Windows (and many of them, not on Linux at all), and it would be a hindrance to switch to another operating system. It is only Ruby which is difficult to keep up to date on Windows. My question was to try and find a solution. I have tried using a VM (VirtualBox and VMWare), but it is not a desirable work flow. I currently use RubyInstaller.
- AlexeyBrin 12y ago
  Have you tried using rvm under Cygwin ? If you can use rvm and Cygwin, you should be able to use the latest Ruby version.
  - irmbrady 12y ago
    I have never used Cygwin before. Thanks for referring me to it. I am currently trying to find the simplest solution for keeping Ruby up to date with the current releases, but having a hard time doing so on Windows. I will experiment with Cygwin at some point.
- Argorak 12y ago
  I am not sure what the relevant tickets were, but I know that Luis wants to release, but some bugs in 2.1 were holding him back. Best ping @luislavena on Twitter.
- ufmace 12y ago
  I'm guessing that you'll probably have to build it yourself. Are you sure you want to use it, though? I haven't installed anything later than 1.9.3 32 bit on Windows since I discovered that that was the latest version that Nokogiri had pre-built binaries for, and using it with anything newer would require me to figure out how to build it against that version. It seems that anything newer than that may be a minefield of bugs on Windows. But it is still my preferred language for scripting and automation on Windows.
- bdcravens 12y ago
  Why not Vagrant? Yes, it's a VM, but it really makes it much easier. Is the issue of using ssh/CLI the issue? If you plan to use Ruby professionally, you're gonna need those skills. Additionally, some things like Redis, common to many Ruby apps, just won't run on Windows.
  - irmbrady 12y ago
    Thanks for the response. Ruby is the only tool I currently use in development on Windows which I have flagged as a potential problem to maintain in the future. Thankfully, Ruby is a rather small part of my workflow, so waiting on RubyInstaller is fine at the moment. My question was more of a concern for the future of my current dev setup. I was hoping someone on HN would know of a better solution to install Ruby on Windows manually, without having to wait on RubyInstaller. I will check out Vagrant as you suggested.
- dragonwriter 12y ago
  > Without being told to use a VM, installing Linux, buying a Mac, and without settling for the 2.0.0-p481 release of RubyInstaller; is there any way for a user to install this version of Ruby on Windows? Yes, you can build from source. OTOH, unless you want to develop windows-specific Ruby software (or work specifically on improving Ruby-on-windows), you are probably better off using a VM -- vagrant is your friend.
- Argorak 12y ago
  Here you go: http://rubyinstaller.org/downloads http://rubyinstaller.org/downloads (if possible, it's usually ~24 hours until the windows packages come in)
- jtgeibel 12y ago
  Fortunately this release does include a Windows release. The home page doesn't yet include a news item for this round of releases, but 2.1.3 is available on the download page. http://rubyinstaller.org/downloads/ http://rubyinstaller.org/downloads/
davexunit 12y ago
TIL that Ruby uses GNU ChangeLog style commit messages. Makes for a really nice change log. I wish more projects adopted this style.
- __david__ 12y ago
  Really? I dislike them intensely. They always seem "inside-out" to me and it makes it really hard to group things into releases visually. I like Debian's changelogs so much better because they are release oriented.
haberman 12y ago
I used to develop Ruby C extensions a lot, but I'm just now getting back into the game. What Ruby versions are considered "current" enough that libraries need to support them? Is the 1.9 line still in wide use? How far back in the 2.1 line is in common use? Normally I wouldn't worry too much about this, except that I've heard that the Ruby C API changes substantially from release to release. Is this true? Anything in particular to watch out for?
- gkop 12y ago
  You can expect libraries to follow Rails' lead. The current rails (4.x) supports 1.9, but next year's rails (5.0) will require 2.x. So about the time that rails 5 comes out I would try to be ready to run 2.x in order to enjoy library compatibility.
  - andyl 12y ago
    I believe Rails5 will require Ruby 2.2.x (which does garbage collection on symbols).
  - haberman 12y ago
    That makes sense. According to the download page (http://rubyonrails.org/download/ http://rubyonrails.org/download/), the current Rails version requires Ruby 1.9.3 or newer. Hopefully testing with Ruby 1.9.3 and the newest (Ruby 2.1.3) will give enough assurance that it works on all the versions in between.
  - dragonwriter 12y ago
    > The current rails (4.x) supports 1.9, but next year's rails (5.0) will require 2.x. The recent Ruby 2.2-preview1 announcement included a statement that the upcoming Rails 5.0 would require Ruby 2.2 (which should have a general release this Christmas), not just 2.x.
- dragonwriter 12y ago
  I believe Ruby-FFI, if it does what you need, is more stable across Ruby versions than the Ruby C API, its also, unlike the C extension API, usable across Ruby implementations -- MRI, Rubinius, and JRuby all support it (not sure if any of the other implementations do.)
jxf 12y ago
I'm a longtime Ruby user (among a number of other languages). I feel very productive in Ruby right now, with Python being a close second. It's also vital to the functioning of my current startup (along with Go). And yet -- I feel like Ruby is growing stagnant. Don't get me wrong: 2.x has brought lots of performance improvements, and some very smart people are constantly making it better, for which I'm eternally grateful. But I can't name a single 2.0-specific feature that I actually use. Refinements were the biggest thing I can think of, and in an informal survey of some other CTOs I know on Ruby stacks, nobody was directly using them. Additionally, for a lot of the features I've come to love in other languages (e.g. pattern matching), my impression is that no one's talking about them in the Ruby community. Much of Ruby's success came from making it one of the most enjoyable languages to develop in, and that's unquestionably still there. But I stare wistfully across the sea to some of alternative choices, and I wonder how much longer that will be true.
- scoot 12y ago
  It isn't so much that it's stagnated, but that it's so nice to start with that improvements are either going to be incremental in nature, or under-the-covers such as GC changes. What I long for from other languages (looking at you Python) is the vast array of library bindings.
  - JonnieCache 12y ago
    >What I long for from other languages (looking at you Python) is the vast array of library bindings. I always seem to find what I need in this respect. What sort of stuff can you not find bindings for?
- tcopeland 12y ago
  I agree, although I do feel like runtime performance was the big problem with Ruby a few years ago. So fixing that was pretty huge.
  - tburns 12y ago
    Fancy running into you here!
revskill 12y ago
I hope to see whether Ruby could create a platform like Wordpress with that strong community. A simple plugin system for the world to use and extend. Is PHP stronger Ruby ?
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- timdorr 12y ago
  PHP has more ubiquity, so it's a least common denominator sort of thing. You can find tons of hosts running a LAMP stack, but not so many supporting Ruby. That is mainly because the tooling needed to maintain a Ruby application server has some additional complexity over PHP, which is mostly plug-and-play. Passenger helps a lot with that, but it's nowhere near the distribution level of PHP, so that is restricting the ecosystem currently. Basically, most people looking to setup a WordPress install can't deal with even the simplest CLI. So things like Heroku or a one-click Digital Ocean box are out. This could be a good idea for a startup...
  - MrBra 12y ago
    I've always thought, if there was a simple, efficient way to simply <?Ruby puts("use Ruby like PHP") ?> then a lot of good stuff could happen.
SamonSL 12y ago
I don't like Odd numbers and hope 2.1.4 comes out soon lol j.k :D This upgrade will be very useful if you use threads or deploy your rails server in threaded mode like in Puma.

115 points by matthewmacleod 12y ago

A big thank you to all committers, Ruby keeps getting nicer and nicer with every release. Keep up the good work everyone!

colinbartlett 12y ago

Very nice! It looks like this might solve memory usage issues in low-memory environments such as cloud services like heroku? Stock Ruby 2.1 was unusable on heroku because of this issue. https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/issues/9607 https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/issues/9607

thinkbohemian 12y ago
Can confirm, I used this backport https://twitter.com/hone02/status/512254413000695808 https://twitter.com/hone02/status/512254413000695808 codetriage.com memory usage dropped by about 200mb, saw my request time drop and CPU load drop. Freaking amazing <3 <3 <3
btown 12y ago
Won't this put more weight in the "long tail" of response times for server applications, since the occasional full GC would stop the world after a thread or process had accepted a request and begun processing? Are there any response-time numbers for Rails sites in-the-wild running 2.1.3 vs. 2.1.2?

irmbrady 12y ago

Without being told to use a VM, installing Linux, buying a Mac, and without settling for the 2.0.0-p481 release of RubyInstaller; is there any way for a user to install this version of Ruby on Windows?

vinceguidry 12y ago
Personally I'd just hold out for awhile until the community updates everything. I personally am waiting for Brightbox to update their Ubuntu ppa packages before making the switch, as that's what all my production Ruby apps are running on.
fdsary 12y ago
I don't mean to come off as an ass, but just curious. Why do you want to develop ruby (or anything else) with windows? Especially since most servers (where ruby is popular) are linux servers? All colleagues I've had running windows always seem to have to jump so many hoops that the *nix crows don't. Also, no unix shell and package managers, how do you deal with it?
- dragonwriter 12y ago
  > Also, no unix shell and package managers, how do you deal with it? There's shells for windows very similar to (some of which are ports of) unix shells, and chocolatey exists.
- irmbrady 12y ago
  I have used Ubuntu and Mac OS in the past, but I am currently favouring doing all of my work on Windows. All of the tools I need run perfectly fine on Windows (and many of them, not on Linux at all), and it would be a hindrance to switch to another operating system. It is only Ruby which is difficult to keep up to date on Windows. My question was to try and find a solution. I have tried using a VM (VirtualBox and VMWare), but it is not a desirable work flow. I currently use RubyInstaller.
AlexeyBrin 12y ago
Have you tried using rvm under Cygwin ? If you can use rvm and Cygwin, you should be able to use the latest Ruby version.
- irmbrady 12y ago
  I have never used Cygwin before. Thanks for referring me to it. I am currently trying to find the simplest solution for keeping Ruby up to date with the current releases, but having a hard time doing so on Windows. I will experiment with Cygwin at some point.
Argorak 12y ago
I am not sure what the relevant tickets were, but I know that Luis wants to release, but some bugs in 2.1 were holding him back. Best ping @luislavena on Twitter.
ufmace 12y ago
I'm guessing that you'll probably have to build it yourself. Are you sure you want to use it, though? I haven't installed anything later than 1.9.3 32 bit on Windows since I discovered that that was the latest version that Nokogiri had pre-built binaries for, and using it with anything newer would require me to figure out how to build it against that version. It seems that anything newer than that may be a minefield of bugs on Windows. But it is still my preferred language for scripting and automation on Windows.
bdcravens 12y ago
Why not Vagrant? Yes, it's a VM, but it really makes it much easier. Is the issue of using ssh/CLI the issue? If you plan to use Ruby professionally, you're gonna need those skills. Additionally, some things like Redis, common to many Ruby apps, just won't run on Windows.
- irmbrady 12y ago
  Thanks for the response. Ruby is the only tool I currently use in development on Windows which I have flagged as a potential problem to maintain in the future. Thankfully, Ruby is a rather small part of my workflow, so waiting on RubyInstaller is fine at the moment. My question was more of a concern for the future of my current dev setup. I was hoping someone on HN would know of a better solution to install Ruby on Windows manually, without having to wait on RubyInstaller. I will check out Vagrant as you suggested.
dragonwriter 12y ago
> Without being told to use a VM, installing Linux, buying a Mac, and without settling for the 2.0.0-p481 release of RubyInstaller; is there any way for a user to install this version of Ruby on Windows? Yes, you can build from source. OTOH, unless you want to develop windows-specific Ruby software (or work specifically on improving Ruby-on-windows), you are probably better off using a VM -- vagrant is your friend.
Argorak 12y ago
Here you go: http://rubyinstaller.org/downloads http://rubyinstaller.org/downloads (if possible, it's usually ~24 hours until the windows packages come in)
jtgeibel 12y ago
Fortunately this release does include a Windows release. The home page doesn't yet include a news item for this round of releases, but 2.1.3 is available on the download page. http://rubyinstaller.org/downloads/ http://rubyinstaller.org/downloads/

davexunit 12y ago

TIL that Ruby uses GNU ChangeLog style commit messages. Makes for a really nice change log. I wish more projects adopted this style.

__david__ 12y ago
Really? I dislike them intensely. They always seem "inside-out" to me and it makes it really hard to group things into releases visually. I like Debian's changelogs so much better because they are release oriented.

haberman 12y ago

I used to develop Ruby C extensions a lot, but I'm just now getting back into the game. What Ruby versions are considered "current" enough that libraries need to support them? Is the 1.9 line still in wide use? How far back in the 2.1 line is in common use? Normally I wouldn't worry too much about this, except that I've heard that the Ruby C API changes substantially from release to release. Is this true? Anything in particular to watch out for?

gkop 12y ago
You can expect libraries to follow Rails' lead. The current rails (4.x) supports 1.9, but next year's rails (5.0) will require 2.x. So about the time that rails 5 comes out I would try to be ready to run 2.x in order to enjoy library compatibility.
- andyl 12y ago
  I believe Rails5 will require Ruby 2.2.x (which does garbage collection on symbols).
- haberman 12y ago
  That makes sense. According to the download page (http://rubyonrails.org/download/ http://rubyonrails.org/download/), the current Rails version requires Ruby 1.9.3 or newer. Hopefully testing with Ruby 1.9.3 and the newest (Ruby 2.1.3) will give enough assurance that it works on all the versions in between.
- dragonwriter 12y ago
  > The current rails (4.x) supports 1.9, but next year's rails (5.0) will require 2.x. The recent Ruby 2.2-preview1 announcement included a statement that the upcoming Rails 5.0 would require Ruby 2.2 (which should have a general release this Christmas), not just 2.x.
dragonwriter 12y ago
I believe Ruby-FFI, if it does what you need, is more stable across Ruby versions than the Ruby C API, its also, unlike the C extension API, usable across Ruby implementations -- MRI, Rubinius, and JRuby all support it (not sure if any of the other implementations do.)

jxf 12y ago

I'm a longtime Ruby user (among a number of other languages). I feel very productive in Ruby right now, with Python being a close second. It's also vital to the functioning of my current startup (along with Go). And yet -- I feel like Ruby is growing stagnant. Don't get me wrong: 2.x has brought lots of performance improvements, and some very smart people are constantly making it better, for which I'm eternally grateful. But I can't name a single 2.0-specific feature that I actually use. Refinements were the biggest thing I can think of, and in an informal survey of some other CTOs I know on Ruby stacks, nobody was directly using them. Additionally, for a lot of the features I've come to love in other languages (e.g. pattern matching), my impression is that no one's talking about them in the Ruby community. Much of Ruby's success came from making it one of the most enjoyable languages to develop in, and that's unquestionably still there. But I stare wistfully across the sea to some of alternative choices, and I wonder how much longer that will be true.

scoot 12y ago
It isn't so much that it's stagnated, but that it's so nice to start with that improvements are either going to be incremental in nature, or under-the-covers such as GC changes. What I long for from other languages (looking at you Python) is the vast array of library bindings.
- JonnieCache 12y ago
  >What I long for from other languages (looking at you Python) is the vast array of library bindings. I always seem to find what I need in this respect. What sort of stuff can you not find bindings for?
tcopeland 12y ago
I agree, although I do feel like runtime performance was the big problem with Ruby a few years ago. So fixing that was pretty huge.
- tburns 12y ago
  Fancy running into you here!

revskill 12y ago

I hope to see whether Ruby could create a platform like Wordpress with that strong community. A simple plugin system for the world to use and extend. Is PHP stronger Ruby ?

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
timdorr 12y ago
PHP has more ubiquity, so it's a least common denominator sort of thing. You can find tons of hosts running a LAMP stack, but not so many supporting Ruby. That is mainly because the tooling needed to maintain a Ruby application server has some additional complexity over PHP, which is mostly plug-and-play. Passenger helps a lot with that, but it's nowhere near the distribution level of PHP, so that is restricting the ecosystem currently. Basically, most people looking to setup a WordPress install can't deal with even the simplest CLI. So things like Heroku or a one-click Digital Ocean box are out. This could be a good idea for a startup...
- MrBra 12y ago
  I've always thought, if there was a simple, efficient way to simply <?Ruby puts("use Ruby like PHP") ?> then a lot of good stuff could happen.

SamonSL 12y ago

I don't like Odd numbers and hope 2.1.4 comes out soon lol j.k :D This upgrade will be very useful if you use threads or deploy your rails server in threaded mode like in Puma.