JRuby 1.2.0 released

JRuby 1.2.0, the Ruby interpreter written "in 100 per cent pure Java", has been released. JRuby 1.2 has improved support for Ruby 1.9, which was updated to the stable version 1.9.1 in February. The Ruby 1.9 support now includes a working compiler and the addition of "almost all" of the missing Ruby 1.9 methods.

A range of performance improvements have been made as the result of a clean up and performance audit of the compiler and runtime. Parsing is now three to six times faster. A new experimental --fast flag will enable more aggressive optimisation. Other issues addressed include a fix for Rails path names on Windows.

JRuby 1.9 also has preliminary Android support in the form of Ruboto, based on work by Charles Nutter to get JRuby running on the mobile platform, though due to the platforms limitations it does not perform just-in-time compilation and only runs as an interpreter.

According to the developers, overall, over 1,000 revisions and 256 bugs have been fixed since version 1.1.6. They have taken the opportunity of this release to announce a change in version numbering "due to popular demand". Previously JRuby versions were numbered 1.x.y where x was major release number and y was minor release number. The "1." has now been declared vestigial and been dropped, so future releases of JRuby numbered 1.3, 1.4, 1.x, will be minor releases of the current major release.

Full details of all the changes are available in the announcement.

(djwm)