Day 1 of 2 of my notes for the Compleat Rubyist training course

Ruby Versions and Implementations  – David

http://ruby-versions.net/ – David’s home for ruby versions & implementations for learning & historical reference

Ruby version manager – http://rvm.beginrescueend.com – lets you install several ruby versions/implementations and easily switch between (including your own custom compiled version). Suggestion – don’t install as root, even though it is allowed.

Notes on a few of the existing options:

• MacRuby – interacts with Cocoa
• Rubinius – Ruby in Ruby
• JRuby – Ruby on JVM
• REE – optimized – created by Phusion Passenger team
• MagLev – built in object persistence, repository instead of files, smalltalk-ish
• IronRuby – Ruby on .NET
• URABE – ?

rvm allows you to compare performance between versions/implementation:

rvm ruby-1.8.6,ruby1.9.2 benchmark filename.rb

Why does everyone use 1.8 instead of 1.9?

• Same amount of people are using it as last year (like almost no one)
• Rails considerations
• 1.9 is not 100% backwards compatible
• 1.8.7 backported many of the features of 1.9, so people feel safer

Ruby Enterprise Edition has major memory and speed improvements

Highlights of changes between 1.8 & 1.9

• Enumerators
• Method parameters
• Block variable binding & scope
• Syntax changes

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Tags: compleatrubyist, ruby, training