Ruby 1.8.7 EOL in 90 days
blade.nagaokaut.ac.jp
blade.nagaokaut.ac.jp
Sam Ruby's "What to expect in 1.9.x" slideshow: http://slideshow.rubyforge.org/ruby19.html#1
Airbnb's migration story: http://nerds.airbnb.com/upgrading-from-ree-187-to-ruby-193
Another migration story: http://www.darkridge.com/~jpr5/2012/10/03/ruby-1.8.7-1.9.3-m...
1.9.1->1.9.2 had breaking changes (most obviously require_relative) and 1.9.2 had performance issues in requiring files. I haven't run into any issues with Ruby 1.9.3, but it's only 1.5 years old, and even 1.9.3 was not 100% backwards compatible.
I understand that this all seems like eternity if you are actively developing a Ruby app, but for everything that is in maintenance mode, 1.8.7 has been a very sane choice until now. I had certainly planned to use it another couple years if possible. :/
Lazy package maintainers have created the perfect atmosphere for a project like rvm to be an essential part of life.
Ruby 1.8.7 will no longer receive security patches, which is a big issue and is likely to motivate any half-decent organization to migrate.
Python 2.7 and Perl 5.14 will continue to see use because both receive security patches, are still maintained, and in the Python case you also have to worry about (well, less so now) whether the libraries you need have moved to 3.x as well.
I'm aware that the GP was trying to be witty, but it doesn't really stick.
The original poster is implying there will be a Ruby 1.8.8 to support the many who can't/won't upgrade to 1.9.
Also, given the adoption of 1.9 in the Ruby world, there is also no point.
This claim is highly dubious, I never heard of it and just to be sure checked the log for PEP 361 "Python 2.6 release schedule". 2.7 has been mentioned since the first revision of the PEP, that the 2.6 release would be synchronized with 3.0 was added early on, I can not find any suggestion that 2.6 would be the 2.x EOL anywhere.
It does specify that some features would be/were backported from 3.0 to 2.6 to help transition, but that's it.
Do you have any source for your claim that 2.6 was supposed to be the 2.x EOL?
For those that don't know... Perl development is on a fixed annual release schedule. Every April the release candidate for next version of Perl arrives (no not delivered by the Easter Bunny!).
So 5.18-RC0 is due next month and if all goes well then 5.18 final will be released the following month (at which point 5.14 will be moved to its final year of security only patches).
ref: https://metacpan.org/module/CORION/perl-5.17.10/Porting/rele...
The real issue there is that the packaging of gems are remade from scratch, so any gems anyone has been forced to package themselves will have to be repackaged.
[] Well, I don't know if they have been released in a final form yet but at least there are early versions available.