Re: Ruby 2.4.0 update

[Ben Woodcroft]

Thanks Marius, an enjoyable xmas read of all the new features it was.


On 26/12/16 03:09, Marius Bakke wrote:
> In good tradition, ruby made a new release today (25/12)[0].
>
> I tried building some packages with the new version, but ruby-minitest
> complains that Rake 12 is too new (even with the latest minitest). There
> have been some core changes as well, with Fixnum and Bignum now merged
> into a single Integer class.
I updated ruby-minitest to the newest version and pushed, but as you 
mention the check phase requires rake <12. This actually stems from hoe 
though rather than minitest, I've asked the devs about it here:
https://github.com/seattlerb/hoe/issues/77

I'm not sure that the Fixnum/Bignum changes are particularly harmful if 
I'm understanding correctly, since both classes can still be used. I 
can't see any possible backwards incompatibility.

> I suggest that we keep ruby 2.3 as the main "ruby" variable until the
> ecosystem catches up. Users will still get the latest version when
> using `guix package` or `guix environment`. WDYT?
I would agree, but I'd hope that the hoe issue is an isolated one and 
that we can make ruby-2.4 the default very soon.

When we do such an update, I think we should make ruby inherit from 
ruby-2.3 as discussed previously. Also, what would you say to setting 
the "--jemalloc" configure flag for speed and compiling with gcc-5, both 
for speed?

Thanks, ben.