Start coding now or wait for Rails 3.0

[Hypnotic]

Hey guys!

I have this website I want to completely re-develop in rails. I started coding it, but then the announcement about the Rails and Merb merge came and I stopped.

Now I'm wondering, should I continue coding the site in Rails 2.x and then change it when Rails 3.0 comes out, or should I wait for the v3.0?

Will the changes in 3.0 be very big?

[Mittineague]

I suppose one can only wait and see what exactly the changes will be. But my sense of it is that most of the changes will be performance improvements rather than drastic API changes. Although I imagine that as with any major version release, some things are likely to break.

That said, from http://weblog.rubyonrails.org/2009/2...k-in-rails-3-0

Rails 3 promises to substantially advance the state of the art in Ruby web frameworks, while still providing migration paths from Rails 2.x and Merb 1.x.

So you can hope that changing over will be relatively painless.

I guess it depends on how much work there is to do, how soon you want to get things done, how much you would mind bug-fixing and re-coding if you need to, and if the possibilty that something you struggled with for a while could have been done more quickly and easily if you had waited bothers you.

Personally, as I don't foresee where any changes will require a major code rewrite (but I could be wrong), I would start now and worry about tweaking things later.

[ReggieB]

My experience of Rails is that it is moving so fast that if you wait to see what the next version will bring, you'll never get anything done.

Also updating from version to version doesn't take too long (sorting out pagination going to version 2 caused me the most work), and personally I've found the process of correcting the code to work with new versions has actually improved my code.

Therefore, I don't look upon upgrading an existing application to a new version with too much concern.

Get in there and start coding!

[Hypnotic]

My experience of Rails is that it is moving so fast that if you wait to see what the next version will bring, you'll never get anything done.

Also updating from version to version doesn't take too long (sorting out pagination going to version 2 caused me the most work), and personally I've found the process of correcting the code to work with new versions has actually improved my code.

Therefore, I don't look upon upgrading an existing application to a new version with too much concern.

Get in there and start coding!

Enough said.

Thanks guys!

[ReggieB]

As if to smite the complacent....

I've just spent the morning fixing a server where the update to Rails 2.2.2 didn't go to plan - It didn't like either the version of MySQL installed (4) nor the latest 5.0.77. Fortunately, the version running on a development system (5.0.18) worked fine.

I still think you should press ahead, but be aware that upgrading can be an interesting experience.

[TomK32]

Use 2.3 and when 3.0 comes closer then deprecation notices pop up in your development log. That's what I do for my new projects.