The Rails 2.0 Preview Release is out. David Heinemeier Hansson provides an overview of some of the new features. There may be several preview releases before the final release. I’m sure there will be bug fixes—but DHH said in his RailsConf Europe keynote that 37signals has been running many sites (including Basecamp) on most of the Rails 2.0 code for several months, so it ought to be pretty solid by now. If I had to guess, I’d say we are 3-4 weeks away from a final release.

Before the final release, the Rails core team have also promised to release version 1.2.4. The update to Rails 1.0 will likely include minor bug fixes, however it’s primary purpose will be to provide complete deprecation warnings. So the process will be: upgrade to 1.2.4, try everything, watch the log files for deprecation warnings, fix any incompatible code, then upgrade to 2.0. Don’t be surprised if 1.2.4 is released only a week before 2.0.

The best way to safely try out the preview release is to download it into the vendor directory of a Rails project. (You will need Subversion installed. If you are on a Mac, this guide can help you install it.) Using a command line, navigate into the root of the project and type:

Once the download is complete, that Rails project (and only that project) will be running on the preview release. Type rake rails:unfreeze if you want to go back to your regularly installed Rails version. Advanced users can opt to install the gem version of the preview release instead.

UPDATE: If you are on Rails 1.2.3, you’ll need to run the “freezing” twice. The first time will not download the new ActiveResource pieces (Rails 1.2.3 doesn’t know about them) and you’ll get errors when you try to start the server. When you run it the second time, Rails will know that it should have ActiveResource and will retrieve it for you.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 2nd, 2007 at 9:52 am and is filed under Ruby on Rails. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.