Ruby 2.7.0-rc1 Released

Posted by naruse on 17 Dec 2019

We are pleased to announce the release of Ruby 2.7.0-rc1.

A release candidate is released to gather feedback for the final release planned for December. This rc1 is mainly released to confirm the compatibility of keyword arguments.

It also introduces a number of new features and performance improvements, most notably:

  • Compaction GC
  • Pattern Matching
  • REPL improvement
  • Separation of positional and keyword arguments

Compaction GC

This release introduces Compaction GC which can defragment a fragmented memory space.

Some multi-threaded Ruby programs may cause memory fragmentation, leading to high memory usage and degraded speed.

The GC.compact method is introduced for compacting the heap. This function compacts live objects in the heap so that fewer pages may be used, and the heap may be more CoW friendly. [Feature #15626]

Pattern Matching [Experimental]

Pattern matching, a widely used feature in functional programming languages, is introduced as an experimental feature. [Feature #14912]

It can traverse a given object and assign its value if it matches a pattern.

require "json"

json = <<END
{
  "name": "Alice",
  "age": 30,
  "children": [{ "name": "Bob", "age": 2 }]
}
END

case JSON.parse(json, symbolize_names: true)
in {name: "Alice", children: [{name: "Bob", age: age}]}
  p age #=> 2
end

For more details, please see Pattern matching - New feature in Ruby 2.7.

REPL improvement

irb, the bundled interactive environment (REPL; Read-Eval-Print-Loop), now supports multi-line editing. It is powered by reline, a readline-compatible pure Ruby implementation. It also provides rdoc integration. In irb you can display the reference for a given class, module, or method. [Feature #14683], [Feature #14787], [Feature #14918]

Besides, source lines shown at binding.irb and inspect results for core-class objects are now colorized.

Separation of positional and keyword arguments

Automatic conversion of keyword arguments and positional arguments is deprecated, and conversion will be removed in Ruby 3. [Feature #14183]

  • When a method call passes a Hash at the last argument, and when it passes no keywords, and when the called method accepts keywords, a warning is emitted. To continue treating the hash as keywords, add a double splat operator to avoid the warning and ensure correct behavior in Ruby 3.

    def foo(key: 42); end; foo({key: 42})   # warned
def foo(**kw);    end; foo({key: 42})   # warned
def foo(key: 42); end; foo(**{key: 42}) # OK
def foo(**kw);    end; foo(**{key: 42}) # OK

  • When a method call passes keywords to a method that accepts keywords, but it does not pass enough required positional arguments, the keywords are treated as a final required positional argument, and a warning is emitted. Pass the argument as a hash instead of keywords to avoid the warning and ensure correct behavior in Ruby 3.

    def foo(h, **kw); end; foo(key: 42)      # warned
def foo(h, key: 42); end; foo(key: 42)   # warned
def foo(h, **kw); end; foo({key: 42})    # OK
def foo(h, key: 42); end; foo({key: 42}) # OK

  • When a method accepts specific keywords but not a keyword splat, and a hash or keywords splat is passed to the method that includes both Symbol and non-Symbol keys, the hash will continue to be split, and a warning will be emitted. You will need to update the calling code to pass separate hashes to ensure correct behavior in Ruby 3.

    def foo(h={}, key: 42); end; foo("key" => 43, key: 42)   # warned
def foo(h={}, key: 42); end; foo({"key" => 43, key: 42}) # warned
def foo(h={}, key: 42); end; foo({"key" => 43}, key: 42) # OK

  • If a method does not accept keywords, and is called with keywords, the keywords are still treated as a positional hash, with no warning. This behavior will continue to work in Ruby 3.

    def foo(opt={});  end; foo( key: 42 )   # OK

  • Non-symbols are allowed as keyword argument keys if the method accepts arbitrary keywords. [Feature #14183]

    def foo(**kw); p kw; end; foo("str" => 1) #=> {"str"=>1}

  • **nil is allowed in method definitions to explicitly mark that the method accepts no keywords. Calling such a method with keywords will result in an ArgumentError. [Feature #14183]

    def foo(h, **nil); end; foo(key: 1)       # ArgumentError
def foo(h, **nil); end; foo(**{key: 1})   # ArgumentError
def foo(h, **nil); end; foo("str" => 1)   # ArgumentError
def foo(h, **nil); end; foo({key: 1})     # OK
def foo(h, **nil); end; foo({"str" => 1}) # OK

  • Passing an empty keyword splat to a method that does not accept keywords no longer passes an empty hash, unless the empty hash is necessary for a required parameter, in which case a warning will be emitted. Remove the double splat to continue passing a positional hash. [Feature #14183]

    h = {}; def foo(*a) a end; foo(**h) # []
h = {}; def foo(a) a end; foo(**h)  # {} and warning
h = {}; def foo(*a) a end; foo(h)   # [{}]
h = {}; def foo(a) a end; foo(h)    # {}

NOTE: Too many deprecation warnings about keyword argument incompatibility have been pointed out to be too verbose. Currently, two possible solutions are discussed; disabling deprecation warnings by default (#16345) or suppressing duplicated warnings (#16289). The final decision is not made, but will be fixed by the official release.

Other Notable New Features

  • A method reference operator, .:, was introduced as an experimental feature in earlier previews, but was reverted. [Feature #12125], [Feature #13581], [Feature #16275]

  • Numbered parameter as the default block parameter is introduced as an experimental feature. [Feature #4475]

  • A beginless range is experimentally introduced. It might not be as useful as an endless range, but would be good for DSL purposes. [Feature #14799]

    ary[..3]  # identical to ary[0..3]
rel.where(sales: ..100)

  • Enumerable#tally is added. It counts the occurrence of each element.

    ["a", "b", "c", "b"].tally
#=> {"a"=>1, "b"=>2, "c"=>1}

  • Calling a private method on self is now allowed. [Feature #11297], [Feature #16123]

    def foo
end
private :foo
self.foo

  • Enumerator::Lazy#eager is added. It generates a non-lazy enumerator from a lazy enumerator. [Feature #15901]

    a = %w(foo bar baz)
e = a.lazy.map {|x| x.upcase }.map {|x| x + "!" }.eager
p e.class               #=> Enumerator
p e.map {|x| x + "?" }  #=> ["FOO!?", "BAR!?", "BAZ!?"]

Performance improvements

  • JIT [Experimental]

    • JIT-ed code is recompiled to less-optimized code when an optimization assumption is invalidated.

    • Method inlining is performed when a method is considered as pure. This optimization is still experimental and many methods are NOT considered as pure yet.

    • The default value of --jit-min-calls is changed from 5 to 10,000.

    • The default value of --jit-max-cache is changed from 1,000 to 100.

  • Symbol#to_s, Module#name, true.to_s, false.to_s, and nil.to_s now always return a frozen String. The returned String is always the same for a given object. [Experimental] [Feature #16150]

  • The performance of CGI.escapeHTML is improved. GH-2226

  • The performance of Monitor and MonitorMixin is improved. [Feature #16255]

Other notable changes since 2.6

  • Some standard libraries are updated.
    • Bundler 2.1.0.pre.3 (History)
    • RubyGems 3.1.0.pre.3 (History)
    • CSV 3.1.2 (NEWS)
    • Racc 1.4.15
    • REXML 3.2.3 (NEWS)
    • RSS 0.2.8 (NEWS)
    • StringScanner 1.0.3
    • Some other libraries that have no original version are also updated.
  • Promote stdlib to default gems
    • The following default gems were published on rubygems.org
      • benchmark
      • cgi
      • delegate
      • getoptlong
      • net-pop
      • net-smtp
      • open3
      • pstore
      • singleton
    • The following default gems were only promoted at ruby-core, but not yet published on rubygems.org.
      • monitor
      • observer
      • timeout
      • tracer
      • uri
      • yaml

  • Proc.new and proc with no block in a method called with a block is warned now.

  • lambda with no block in a method called with a block errs.

  • Update Unicode version and Emoji version from 11.0.0 to 12.0.0. [Feature #15321]

  • Update Unicode version to 12.1.0, adding support for U+32FF SQUARE ERA NAME REIWA. [Feature #15195]

  • Date.jisx0301, Date#jisx0301, and Date.parse support the new Japanese era. [Feature #15742]

  • Require compilers to support C99 [Misc #15347]
  • Regexp#match{?} with nil raises TypeError as String, Symbol. [Feature #13083] reverted

See NEWS or commit logs for more details.

With those changes, 4163 files changed, 226280 insertions(+), 99449 deletions(-) since Ruby 2.6.0! Enjoy programming with Ruby 2.7!

Download

  • https://cache.ruby-lang.org/pub/ruby/2.7/ruby-2.7.0-rc1.tar.bz2

    SIZE: 14691356
SHA1: f501841276c4a922104b4afb19ff385a6de6b2e0
SHA256: 1c5a02b63fa9fca37c41681bbbf20c55818a32315958c0a6c8f505943bfcb2d2
SHA512: b5f96227775f8bdf19f944a555d0a83d7e84b37bd31fe4b8ac008a3272b1a28a4d94abbb1b5570ee32ec0690ba9d476b837a020a5194bee14bebf6f0e768bc79

  • https://cache.ruby-lang.org/pub/ruby/2.7/ruby-2.7.0-rc1.tar.gz

    SIZE: 16772802
SHA1: c45cb603ed845d1e0d458d3fdc1afc910b6945b4
SHA256: 59bd97b82e167453b5c76bc0fbb50ebda15ccee56b9ef1e94d5530b095b8a392
SHA512: 6710266d221e9fd0ac9d6c40d48ce502badbc8b87ef500bb428b63e1744497903be267860dbc93a78235ef959ae3326f7e3c597b5567df87648fccb216d56f7d

  • https://cache.ruby-lang.org/pub/ruby/2.7/ruby-2.7.0-rc1.tar.xz

    SIZE: 11987512
SHA1: 7d57c78a1c05e4d03d9f6726512f2c31d74413d8
SHA256: 7528db87df7a8cbfdcbd053073839f5a00b2a38f807771e3e45000e72fc86732
SHA512: 202b1a5bf01e6c398b8745cf968027db507ef39df521b3b24e06c6894d507ffcef9e904fa0d3a47f8be98fe750ca15a9829eb75627dacb4679538a61dabbe368

  • https://cache.ruby-lang.org/pub/ruby/2.7/ruby-2.7.0-rc1.zip

    SIZE: 20645360
SHA1: 3f0c415b8c2c674c9d4a86cce48347b15f822de8
SHA256: f0c73add73c84a0390dca858c8c24e0cab107ada7dea7193e1ae207f78b79193
SHA512: 23db300274f8a60aa89b3ab4a1685fba527b62c66b6944f03fdb4c32418e65aae3adc909c7c7c8dae743def230dadbf19ec3be6de50a9e955a0049b5c26e4020

What is Ruby

Ruby was first developed by Matz (Yukihiro Matsumoto) in 1993, and is now developed as Open Source. It runs on multiple platforms and is used all over the world especially for web development.