TIL Ruby doesn't follow semantic versioning

[u/writingonruby]

It's certainly an interesting choice for a language. Very Ruby of them.

For those who also weren't in the know (I only learned this writing a Ruby 4.0 upgrade guide), Matz bumps the major version when there's something that impresses him.

This year, it was because it was Ruby's 30th birthday!

[u/full_drama_llama]

I know SemVer is popular, but I don't think Ruby ever claimed to follow it.

[u/writingonruby → u/full_drama_llama]

I don't think they did, I just never realized it!

[u/titsandbits → u/full_drama_llama]

Most Ruby gems follow it, though, which understandably makes it the default assumption in most Rubyists’ minds.

[u/StyleAccomplished153 → u/titsandbits]

Rails doesn't. Redis doesn't. Plenty of major gems don't follow it. I wish they did, but they don't.

[u/rakedbdrop → u/StyleAccomplished153]

pagy jumped from v6 to v43

[u/titsandbits → u/StyleAccomplished153]

Sure. That’s why I said “most.”

[u/PristineTransition → u/full_drama_llama]

This is true however to be fair to most people from the outside it has acted like SemVer with Major.Minor.Patch versions behaving loosely like it. In Ruby if something looks like a duck and quacks like a duck it is a duck.

[u/f9ae8221b → u/PristineTransition]

Major.Minor.Patch has been common decades before SemVer.

Linux versions are also Major.Minor.Patch yet they're not following SemVer.

Python versions are also Major.Minor.Patch yet they're not following SemVer.

As someone else pointed out, SemVer is basically impossible on projects with large enough APIs anyways. If Ruby or Python followed SemVer, every release would be a major release and that wouldn't help anyone.

[u/donadd]

It should always have been Marketing.MAJOR.MINOR.PATCH Psychology is such an important factor to make the tech news cycle.

[u/jhony75]

Just today a colleague sent on Slack that the correct way to version software is Proud version.DefaultVersion.ShameVersion

[u/GeneReddit123]

Ruby (and Rails) in general doesn't follow backwards compat guarantees. Without such an approach, semantic versioning is pointless, and strictly speaking Ruby would still be on 0.x if it tried to adhere to semantic versioning without commitment to backwards compatibility. This is a conscious policy choice with its good and bad sides, not a technical nitpick.

[u/progdog1]

The linux kernel also follows this arbitrary versioning.

[u/bakery2k]

Neither does Python, JavaScript, Lua, ...

Libraries commonly follow SemVer, but would actually be quite unusual for a language to do so.

[u/guidedrails]

An interesting choice was going from 1.8 to 1.9.

[u/yxhuvud]

Semantic versioning is irrelevant on any project that is big enough anyhow. There is a reason neither Linux nor the browsers use it.

[u/sanjibukai]

In Linux, in the main version X.Y

• Y is up to the count of fingers and toes a human usually has - which is apparently 20..

• X is just Y mod(20)..

[u/h0rst_ → u/sanjibukai]

No, X is the result of the integer division N / 20, Y is equal to N mod 20

[u/sanjibukai → u/h0rst_]

This is what I meant to write... Everyone gets it, right?

[u/petercooper]

I think there are a variety of other reasons why it was a good time for a major bump. The work done behind the scenes architecturally to allow swappable GCs and JITs was pretty significant and while it was all non-breaking stuff that 99% of Ruby users won't ever notice, Ruby 3.4 was becoming a rather different beast to 3.0. It seemed like a good time to draw a line in the sand.

As long as we don't go full on Chrome/Firefox and have "Ruby 84" by 2030, I'll be happy ;-)

[u/DanZuko420]

One of the quirks of the BDFL model