I'm finding it's not that people can't upgrade to 1.9.2, it's that many don't want to.
I have a pretty decent-sized application running on REE and Rails 2.3.x. I've made my code fully 1.9.2 compatible. My specs take on average 3.5 times longer to run in 1.9.2. Profiling that shows that close to 60% of the time is spent in Kernel#require. Now, it's pretty common for people to say only profile in the production environment, but I need to be able to run my specs. And it's not acceptable to shell that out to a CI server or to run REE in dev. mode and deploy with 1.9.2. Running in spork is a gross approximation, too; I've seen way too many issues there.
My suspicion is that if you have a small enough project, the speed difference is negligible. If you have a large project, it becomes much more pronounced. So, it'd really be nice for me to continue to upgrade and improve my Rails-based app without having to drag along an environment that's going to hobble me.
FWIW, I do know people that have started on 1.9.2 and rolled back to REE because speed was such a problem.
I see. My two projects are indeed quite small yet (but running the tests already takes quite long).
But: the solution to this problem isn't not upgrading and then demanding support for your outdated environment. The solution is to fix whatever is slow and try to get a patch upstream.
Now I don't know how likely the ruby developers are to accept a patch, but once this becomes too painful for me, I will try and have a look. I might not be able to fix it, but at least I know that I'm not stuck in the past, terrified and unable to move
Well, the solution isn't upgrading for the sake of upgrading either. 1.9.2 buys me absolutely nothing and has some major costs associated with it. REE is chugging along like a champ.
I don't really understand why the release of 1.9.2 meant all else had to be dropped. Most other communities continue to support their stable releases. It's not as if 1.9.2 has even displaced 1.8.7 with virtually any of the linux distros either. If your policy is to use security-audited / supported packages, as is the case in many environments, moving to 1.9.2 is a dealbreaker.
Anyway, supporting 1.8.7 and 1.9.2 is trivial in most cases. I'm not demanding support for my environment, which I prefer to think of more as stable and battle-tested than "outdated." But I don't understand actively dropping support for it either.
I have a pretty decent-sized application running on REE and Rails 2.3.x. I've made my code fully 1.9.2 compatible. My specs take on average 3.5 times longer to run in 1.9.2. Profiling that shows that close to 60% of the time is spent in Kernel#require. Now, it's pretty common for people to say only profile in the production environment, but I need to be able to run my specs. And it's not acceptable to shell that out to a CI server or to run REE in dev. mode and deploy with 1.9.2. Running in spork is a gross approximation, too; I've seen way too many issues there.
My suspicion is that if you have a small enough project, the speed difference is negligible. If you have a large project, it becomes much more pronounced. So, it'd really be nice for me to continue to upgrade and improve my Rails-based app without having to drag along an environment that's going to hobble me.
FWIW, I do know people that have started on 1.9.2 and rolled back to REE because speed was such a problem.