Re: Changing the default version of Ruby to be 1.9

[Clint Byrum <clint@ubuntu.com>]

Excerpts from Sam Ruby's message of Mon Jan 02 10:13:27 -0800 2012:
> The Ruby team has indicated that they plan to stop providing bug support 
> for Ruby 1.8.7 later this year, and to drop all support next year:
> 
> http://www.ruby-lang.org/en/news/2011/10/06/plans-for-1-8-7/
> 
> The Rails team has indicated that they will be dropping support for Ruby 
> 1.8.7 with the next major release, expected to occur later this year:
> 
> http://weblog.rubyonrails.org/2011/12/20/rails-master-is-now-4-0-0-beta
> 
> Given that Debian already provides support for changing the default 
> version, wouldn't it make sense for the next release of Debian (and the 
> next release of Ubuntu, given that 12.04 is intended to be LTS release) 
> to default to Ruby 1.9.3?

I think it makes quite a lot of sense for the next release of Debian, and
I'd be happy to pledge some of my own time to help with that transition.

I think we may be a little too close to the planned release date of
Precise (April) to start a transition of that size. Even though 1.8.7
will not have upstream's support, having software that is known to
work together at release time is more important. The lack of upstream
support is also mitigated by the fact that 1.9.3 will be available in
main for users who need it and are prepared to deal with any problems
that may arise.