DISQUS

I see a few problems here:

1. The Ruby development team included an API change (a new method) to a patch release. This should not have been done.

2. "The nasty habit" of updating and staying on the cutting edge also contributed to this problem. This isn't just a problem with Avidi, but I have also been bitten by that bad habit.

3. The Ruby language does not have a well defined spec and test case suit, which leads into problems like these.

4. Blaming the Rails development team for using a language feature (albeit an often discouraged one) is wrong.

I offer the following to try to remedy the situation:

1. Path releases should be just that. No new features should be introduced in a z (as in x.y.z) release.

2. If one does not need what a new version of any software package provides, there is no need to upgrade. However, it's an assumed fact in the open source software world that a patch release is, more often than not, safe to upgrade to, so the problem is twofold. (See 1)

3. There is rubyspec.org and all of the large Ruby based frameworks and libraries have reliable and fairly complete test suites that can be run against a Ruby release. Obviously the Ruby development team failed to test an unusual release with all the available test suites. I don't have to tell anyone how important testing is, specially when you have pretty a lot of customers.

4. Thought it is a discouraged practice, for better or worse, the ability to extend the core library (or any already defined class) is a built-in language feature of Ruby and using it should not draw criticism towards the Rails development team.

This just my opinion on the matter.