Will ruby19 replace ruby?

[C. Florian Ebeling]

On Thu, Dec 25, 2008 at 12:06 PM, Neil <kngspook at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Thu, Dec 25, 2008 at 2:59 AM, C. Florian Ebeling
> <florian.ebeling at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Thu, Dec 25, 2008 at 11:30 AM, Neil <kngspook at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> After ruby19 is stable, will it replace ruby?
>>
>> since 1.9 has a slightly, but incompatibly changed syntax, I don't
>> think that would be a good idea. I find other dynamic languages
>> being present in parallel in several versions and though we do
>> the same with ruby. E.g we have php4/php5,
>> python{21,22,23,24,25,26,30}, perl{5,5.8,5.10},
>> so it seems reasonable to do the same with ruby.
>>
>
> I don't think it would be a good idea either, but I wasn't sure:
> there's no 'perl' or 'python' ports, but there's a 'ruby'.
>
> So then for consistency's sake, there should be some renames; for example:
> ruby -> ruby18
> py-* -> py24-* (or to their respective dep, all the ones I've seen are
> depending on python24)
> rb-* -> ruby18-* (perhaps)

sounds like a lot of work to me for a small gain. you would probably need
an empty "ruby" port with a sole "ruby18" dependency to avoid breaking
all existing ports and installation, and then explain all this to puzzeled
users. and probably the same for all ruby/rb-* ports. So quite some migration
phase.

but if somebody was willing to drive such an effort I wouldn't opposed
it. we should still probably get quite detailed reasoning about all the
implications for various scenarios and explaintions why it doesn't
break things, before starting.

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-- 
Florian Ebeling
Twitter: febeling
florian.ebeling at gmail.com