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Ruby 1.9.3 reached end of life in Feb 2015 as is stated in https://www.ruby-lang.org/en/news/2015/02/23/support-for-ruby-1-9-3-has-ended/ Is good to anyone to know that 2.x.x are the only rubies which get official security patches
139 lines
6.4 KiB
Markdown
139 lines
6.4 KiB
Markdown
---
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category: tool
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tool: ruby ecosystem
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contributors:
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- ["Jon Smock", "http://github.com/jonsmock"]
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- ["Rafal Chmiel", "http://github.com/rafalchmiel"]
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---
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People using Ruby generally have a way to install different Ruby versions,
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manage their packages (or gems), and manage their gem dependencies.
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## Ruby Managers
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Some platforms have Ruby pre-installed or available as a package. Most rubyists
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do not use these, or if they do, they only use them to bootstrap another Ruby
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installer or implementation. Instead rubyists tend to install a Ruby manager to
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install and switch between many versions of Ruby and their projects' Ruby
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environments.
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The following are the popular Ruby environment managers:
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* [RVM](https://rvm.io/) - Installs and switches between rubies. RVM also has
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the concept of gemsets to isolate projects' environments completely.
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* [ruby-build](https://github.com/sstephenson/ruby-build) - Only installs
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rubies. Use this for finer control over your rubies' installations.
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* [rbenv](https://github.com/sstephenson/rbenv) - Only switches between rubies.
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Used with ruby-build. Use this for finer control over how rubies load.
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* [chruby](https://github.com/postmodern/chruby) - Only switches between rubies.
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Similar in spirit to rbenv. Unopinionated about how rubies are installed.
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## Ruby Versions
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Ruby was created by Yukihiro "Matz" Matsumoto, who remains somewhat of a
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[BDFL](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benevolent_Dictator_for_Life), although
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that is changing recently. As a result, the reference implementation of Ruby is
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called MRI (Matz' Reference Implementation), and when you hear a Ruby version,
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it is referring to the release version of MRI.
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The three major version of Ruby in use are:
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* 2.0.0 - Released in February 2013. Most major libraries and frameworks support
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2.0.0.
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* 1.9.3 - Released in October 2011. This is the version most rubyists use
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currently. Also [retired](https://www.ruby-lang.org/en/news/2015/02/23/support-for-ruby-1-9-3-has-ended/)
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* 1.8.7 - Ruby 1.8.7 has been
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[retired](http://www.ruby-lang.org/en/news/2013/06/30/we-retire-1-8-7/).
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The change between 1.8.7 to 1.9.x is a much larger change than 1.9.3 to 2.0.0.
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For instance, the 1.9 series introduced encodings and a bytecode VM. There
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are projects still on 1.8.7, but they are becoming a small minority, as most of
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the community has moved to at least 1.9.2 or 1.9.3.
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## Ruby Implementations
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The Ruby ecosystem enjoys many different implementations of Ruby, each with
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unique strengths and states of compatibility. To be clear, the different
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implementations are written in different languages, but *they are all Ruby*.
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Each implementation has special hooks and extra features, but they all run
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normal Ruby files well. For instance, JRuby is written in Java, but you do
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not need to know Java to use it.
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Very mature/compatible:
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* [MRI](https://github.com/ruby/ruby) - Written in C, this is the reference implementation of Ruby. By
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definition it is 100% compatible (with itself). All other rubies
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maintain compatibility with MRI (see [RubySpec](#rubyspec) below).
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* [JRuby](http://jruby.org/) - Written in Java and Ruby, this robust implementation is quite fast.
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Most importantly, JRuby's strength is JVM/Java interop, leveraging existing
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JVM tools, projects, and languages.
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* [Rubinius](http://rubini.us/) - Written primarily in Ruby itself with a C++ bytecode VM. Also
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mature and fast. Because it is implemented in Ruby itself, it exposes many VM
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features into rubyland.
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Medium mature/compatible:
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* [Maglev](http://maglev.github.io/) - Built on top of Gemstone, a Smalltalk VM. Smalltalk has some
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impressive tooling, and this project tries to bring that into Ruby
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development.
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* [RubyMotion](http://www.rubymotion.com/) - Brings Ruby to iOS development.
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Less mature/compatible:
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* [Topaz](http://topazruby.com/) - Written in RPython (using the PyPy toolchain), Topaz is fairly young
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and not yet compatible. It shows promise to be a high-performance Ruby
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implementation.
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* [IronRuby](http://ironruby.net/) - Written in C# targeting the .NET platform, work on IronRuby seems
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to have stopped since Microsoft pulled their support.
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Ruby implementations may have their own release version numbers, but they always
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target a specific version of MRI for compatability. Many implementations have
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the ability to enter different modes (for example, 1.8 or 1.9 mode) to specify
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which MRI version to target.
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## RubySpec
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Most Ruby implementations rely heavily on [RubySpec](http://rubyspec.org/). Ruby
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has no official specification, so the community has written executable specs in
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Ruby to test their implementations' compatibility with MRI.
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## RubyGems
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[RubyGems](http://rubygems.org/) is a community-run package manager for Ruby.
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RubyGems ships with Ruby, so there is no need to download it separately.
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Ruby packages are called "gems," and they can be hosted by the community at
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RubyGems.org. Each gem contains its source code and some metadata, including
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things like version, dependencies, author(s), and license(s).
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## Bundler
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[Bundler](http://bundler.io/) is a gem dependency resolver. It uses a project's
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Gemfile to find dependencies, and then fetches those dependencies' dependencies
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recursively. It does this until all dependencies are resolved and downloaded, or
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it will stop if a conflict has been found.
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Bundler will raise an error if it finds conflicting dependencies. For example,
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if gem A requires version 3 or greater of gem Z, but gem B requires version 2,
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Bundler will notify you of the conflict. This becomes extremely helpful as many
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gems refer to other gems (which refer to other gems), which can form a large
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dependency graph to resolve.
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# Testing
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Testing is a large part of Ruby culture. Ruby comes with its own Unit-style
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testing framework called minitest (Or TestUnit for Ruby version 1.8.x). There
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are many testing libraries with different goals.
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* [TestUnit](http://ruby-doc.org/stdlib-1.8.7/libdoc/test/unit/rdoc/Test/Unit.html) - Ruby 1.8's built-in "Unit-style" testing framework
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* [minitest](http://ruby-doc.org/stdlib-2.0.0/libdoc/minitest/rdoc/MiniTest.html) - Ruby 1.9/2.0's built-in testing framework
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* [RSpec](http://rspec.info/) - A testing framework that focuses on expressivity
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* [Cucumber](http://cukes.info/) - A BDD testing framework that parses Gherkin formatted tests
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## Be Nice
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The Ruby community takes pride in being an open, diverse, welcoming community.
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Matz himself is extremely friendly, and the generosity of rubyists on the whole
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is amazing.
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