Ruby on Rails Version 2.3.8 released on 25th May 2010

CCH : An update from Riding Rails

The 2.3.7 release slipped out the door too hastily. Fixing compatibility with the rails_xss plugin inadvertently forced everyone to use it. Facepalm.

I apologize for wasting a chunk of your day on installing what ought to have been a patch-level update only to find it breaks your app. That’s well out of line with our stable release process and it’s my fault for stepping out of it. I got caught up in a sky-is-falling response to a 2.3.6 bug that affected a handful of users and responded with a fix that exposed a new flaw to nearly all users, despite testing and sanity checking.

Thanks for all your feedback today. We hear you, and yes, a thousand times yes. Every stable release, including point releases, deserves the same methodical drumbeat on its march from git stable to to .pre gem to final gem. Expect no less.

Now, on to the gem-cutting: Rails 2.3.8 is available now, bringing us back to stable ground.

Ruby on Rails Version 2.3.7 released on 23rd May 2010

CCH : Update from Riding Rails

With the 2.3.6 release hot out of the oven, Nathan Weizenbaum began updating HAML to support it.

He uncovered a couple of bugs in the HTML-safety changes backported from Rails 3, so we’re cutting a 2.3.7 release to fix them.

If you use the rails_xss plugin for automatic HTML escaping, you should upgrade to Rails 2.3.7 and the latest rails_xss plugin.

If you don’t use the rails_xss plugin yet, now’s the time to start. It’s baked in to Rails 3.
Update: fixing compatibility with the rails_xss plugin broke HTML-safety for apps that don’t use rails_xss. We’re sorry, all: HTML-safety is meant to be opt-in! The fix is available now in 2.3.8.pre1 and will be released shortly.

Ruby on Rails Version 2.3.6 released on 23rd May 2010

CCH : Ruby on Rails Version 2.3.6 released on 23rd May 2010

We’ve released Ruby on Rails 2.3.6: six months of bug fixes, a handful of new features, and a strong bridge to Rails 3.
We deprecated some obscure and ancient features in Rails 2.3.6 so we could cut them entirely from Rails 3. If your app runs on Rails 2.3.6 without deprecation warnings, you’re in good shape for a smooth sail onward.
This slow-cooked dish is brought to you some 87 committers from our all-volunteer kitchen.
Now, let’s open the goodie bag!

Action Pack

• Upgrade Rack from 1.0.1 to 1.1.0.
• XSS prevention: update to match Rails 3 and move to the official plugin at http://github.com/rails/rails_xss.
• Cookies: convenient cookie jar add-ons to set permanent or signed cookies, or both at once: cookies.permanent.signed[:remember_me] = current_user.id. Read more.
• Flash: promote alert and notice, the most common flash keys in many apps, to self.alert = '...' and self.notice = '...'. Add redirect_to url, :alert => '...' and :notice => '...'. Read more.
• i18n: localize the label helper.

Active Record

• Namespacing: support optional table name prefixes on modules by defining self.table_name_prefix. Read more.
• Destroy uses optimistic locking.
• Counter cache: use Post.reset_counters(1234, :comments) to count the number of comments for post 1234 and reset its comments_count cache.
• PostgreSQL: always use standard-conforming strings, if supported.
• MySQL: add index length support. Read more.
• MySQL: add_ and change_column support column positioning using :first => true and :after => :other_column.

Active Support

• Upgrade i18n from 1.3.3 to 1.3.7.
• Upgrade TZInfo from 0.3.12 to 0.3.16.
• Multibyte: speed up string verification and cleaning.
• JSON: use YAJL for JSON decoding, if available. gem install yajl-ruby
• Testing: add assert_blank and assert_present. Read more.
• Core: backport Object#singleton_class from Ruby 1.8.8, deprecating our Object#metaclass.
• Core: add Object#presence that returns the object if it’s #present? otherwise returns nil. Example: region = params[:state].presence || params[:country].presence || 'US'
• Core: add Enumerable#exclude? to match include?.
• Core: rename Array#rand to Array#random_element to avoid collision with Kernel#rand.
• Core: rename Date# and Time#last_(month|year) to #prev_(month|year) for Ruby 1.9 forward compatibility.

Active Resource

• JSON: set ActiveResource::Base.include_root_in_json = true to serialize as a hash of model name -> attributes instead of a bare attributes hash. Defaults to false.

Action Mailer

• Upgrade TMail from 1.2.3 to 1.2.7.

Railties

• Silence RubyGems 1.3.6 deprecation warnings.