Posted by shyouhei on 30 Jun 2013

I wish I could say something epic but sadly my English skill is very limited, so I just say what I say: it’s the end, as planned.

About Ruby 1.8.7

Now, a majority of you are using Ruby 1.9.x or 2.0.0 (IF NOT PLEASE DO). In the past however, there were other versions like 1.4.x, 1.6.x, and 1.8.x. They were the lineal descendents of original Ruby 1.0, so-called MRI. When Matz released 1.8.0 it was the state-of-art release. 1.8.7 was the last scion of that clan.

Technically speaking, it’s been a decade since we released 1.8.0, and 5 years since we released 1.8.7. Back then, Ruby was used to write CGI scripts. Then the situation changed dramatically with the raise of Rails. So many users started using Ruby. And internally, we finally merged ko1’s new engine (called YARV back then). The engine became the canonical Ruby that you use today.

So after 10 years, I’m really glad that I can say 1.8.7 became a legacy. It made history. It changed our lives literally. And to continue the change, we’re moving forward. Ruby 2.0.0 is just great but to make forthcoming 2.1 even more fascinating, I’m going to sunset 1.8.7 and focus on our bleeding-edge Ruby trunk.

Thank you 1.8.7, it was a good life for a program.

About YOUR Ruby 1.8.7

You might still have an executable of Ruby 1.8.7 somewhere in your system. Depending on how you installed it, your Ruby 1.8.7 might or might not be supported by someone else, because there are some 3rd-parties that do continue supporting 1.8.7. The only thing I can say is I won’t support it any longer. So if you’re using what I’ve released, watch out and find a solution that suits your situation.