Ruby 1.9.2 gets a second release candidate

Less than one week after the first release candidate arrived, the Ruby developers have issued a second release candidate for Ruby 1.9.2, the latest iteration of the Ruby programming language. According to the developers, the final version is expected to arrive in August after release plans were adjusted in March to ensure that 1.9.2 would pass all RubySpec tests. The developers say that it "now passes more than 99%" of those tests.

Described as "mostly compatible" with 1.9.1, Ruby 1.9.2 features new character set encodings, a new Random class with support for various random number generators, a new IPv6-supporting socket API and the addition of of several new methods. Other changes include regexp enhancements and a reimplemented Time which no longer suffers a year 2038 issue.

As with all development releases, use in production environments and on mission critical systems is not advised. Users testing the release are encouraged to provide feedback and report any bugs that they encounter.

More details about the second release candidate, including a summary of changes, can be found in the release announcement and in the News file and change log. The source code for Ruby 1.9.2RC2 is available to download from the announcement page in bzipped or gzipped tar format or as a zip file. Ruby is licensed under the Ruby licence or under the version 2 of the GNU General Public Licence (GPLv2).

See also:

• Roadmap for Ruby 1.9.2, a report from The H.
• Ruby 1.9 ready for prime-time with release of Ruby 1.9.1, a report from The H.

(crve)