Ruby 2.0 for 2013

The developers of the Ruby language have produced their first schedule for the development and release of Ruby 2.0. Yusuke Endoh, release manager for Ruby 2.0, posted a schedule which, after correction, sees Ruby 2.0 being released on 24 February 2013 – the 20th anniversary of Ruby. Endoh's plan also has a "big feature freeze" in August 2012 where big features such as language changes, garbage collection modifications, Dtrace support or bytecode export would be tested for readiness on a "pass or fail" basis. Then, in October 2012, a more traditional feature freeze would take place and the run up to the 2013 release would begin in earnest.

Ruby creator, Yukihiro Matsumoto aka Matz, has already said that the developers are not considering implementing any incompatible changes in Ruby 2.0; those types of changes will have to wait for Ruby 3.0. According to Ruby Inside, things being considered for Ruby 2.0 include support for keyword arguments allowing more readable method calls; the ability to export, import and run Ruby code as pre-compiled YARV virtual machine bytecode; a new technique for 'monkey-patching' Ruby code called Refinements; and the conversion of Ruby's standard libraries to gems. However, these plans are still in development.

Ruby 1.9.2 is the current stable version of Ruby. Ruby 1.9.3 is due soon, and is currently available as a release candidate, and Ruby 1.9.4 is being actively developed.

(djwm)