Issue #21657 has been updated by dmitry.pogrebnoy (Dmitry Pogrebnoy). Thank you for the clarification! I just wanted to make sure there isn’t another release already planned beyond 3.5. For example, a 4.0 version with some other significant changes. If it’s purely a versioning matter and 3.5 remains the next major release, that’s perfectly fine. I just wanted to confirm so we can plan ahead accordingly. ---------------------------------------- Misc #21657: Question: Is Ruby 4.0 planned for December 2025 or later? https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/issues/21657#change-114979 * Author: dmitry.pogrebnoy (Dmitry Pogrebnoy) * Status: Feedback ---------------------------------------- Hello Ruby core team, I noticed that the first preview of Ruby 3.5 has been released, and at the same time there’s some talk in the community about Ruby 4.0 potentially arriving in December 2025. Could you please clarify what the current roadmap looks like? Is Ruby 4.0 already planned for this December, or is the next stable release still Ruby 3.5? Having a clear, public roadmap would really help library and tooling authors (like IDE vendors) prepare for upcoming versions and provide better support. Thank you! -- https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/

Issue #21657 has been updated by dmitry.pogrebnoy (Dmitry Pogrebnoy). Thank you! The version number itself doesn’t affect anything on our side. Whether it’s released as 3.5 or 4.0, both are perfectly fine. I just wanted to make sure I’m not missing an extra release in between. ---------------------------------------- Misc #21657: Question: Is Ruby 4.0 planned for December 2025 or later? https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/issues/21657#change-114981 * Author: dmitry.pogrebnoy (Dmitry Pogrebnoy) * Status: Feedback ---------------------------------------- Hello Ruby core team, I noticed that the first preview of Ruby 3.5 has been released, and at the same time there’s some talk in the community about Ruby 4.0 potentially arriving in December 2025. Could you please clarify what the current roadmap looks like? Is Ruby 4.0 already planned for this December, or is the next stable release still Ruby 3.5? Having a clear, public roadmap would really help library and tooling authors (like IDE vendors) prepare for upcoming versions and provide better support. Thank you! -- https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/

Issue #21657 has been updated by byroot (Jean Boussier). @bkuhlmann please don't restrict the upper versions unless you know for a fact it's incompatible. This prevent the community from testing early release and fixing the compatibility issues in advance. This practice is slowing the community down. ---------------------------------------- Misc #21657: Question: Is Ruby 4.0 planned for December 2025 or later? https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/issues/21657#change-115040 * Author: dmitry.pogrebnoy (Dmitry Pogrebnoy) * Status: Feedback ---------------------------------------- Hello Ruby core team, I noticed that the first preview of Ruby 3.5 has been released, and at the same time there’s some talk in the community about Ruby 4.0 potentially arriving in December 2025. Could you please clarify what the current roadmap looks like? Is Ruby 4.0 already planned for this December, or is the next stable release still Ruby 3.5? Having a clear, public roadmap would really help library and tooling authors (like IDE vendors) prepare for upcoming versions and provide better support. Thank you! -- https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/

Issue #21657 has been updated by byroot (Jean Boussier). @retro, hard disagree, because if everyone did what you suggest, it means that every year: - You need to wait on every single one of you dependency to cut a new release with an updated gemspec. When you get hundreds of dependencies this may take months, or even never happen if the gem is abandoned. - If in the meantime one dependency made a breaking change or bumped a major version, you need to migrate to the latest version of that gem before you can upgrade Ruby. The same thing happen with gem that impose an upper version on Rails, it's extremely annoying and absolutely not practical. I agree than in an ideal world, the bundler resolver would know about such incompatibilities, but they can't be known in advance. IMO this is something that gem authors should be able to declare AFTER the gem is released not at release (but I understand this is challenging). ---------------------------------------- Misc #21657: Question: Is Ruby 4.0 planned for December 2025 or later? https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/issues/21657#change-115042 * Author: dmitry.pogrebnoy (Dmitry Pogrebnoy) * Status: Feedback ---------------------------------------- Hello Ruby core team, I noticed that the first preview of Ruby 3.5 has been released, and at the same time there’s some talk in the community about Ruby 4.0 potentially arriving in December 2025. Could you please clarify what the current roadmap looks like? Is Ruby 4.0 already planned for this December, or is the next stable release still Ruby 3.5? Having a clear, public roadmap would really help library and tooling authors (like IDE vendors) prepare for upcoming versions and provide better support. Thank you! -- https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/

Issue #21657 has been updated by bkuhlmann (Brooke Kuhlmann). **Jean**: Sorry, I didn't provide enough context to my original statement. Each year -- about ~2 months before Christmas when a new Ruby version drops -- I release a *patch* version of all my gems that accepts the current version and potential upcoming version. Example: ``` ruby # Assuming a Ruby 3.5.0 release. spec.required_ruby_version = ">= 3.4", "<= 3.5" ``` This gives the Ruby community some leeway (i.e. cross-over period) which supports the current Ruby version and the upcoming Ruby version. During this time, I'll test against both the old Ruby and the release candidates. Often, I'll report bugs here or bugs against the individual gems (which ever is most applicable). Once the new version of Ruby drops on Christmas (let's say Ruby 3.5.0 for this year). I'll release *major* versions for all my gems where the gemspec requirement is now: ``` ruby spec.required_ruby_version = "~> 3.5" ``` The reason I do this end-of-year dance each year stems from the following: - Ruby doesn't adhere to Semantic Versioning so I can't rely on each new version of Ruby causing maintenance grief. - Because each new Ruby can break functionality, I make sure to support the new syntax, drop the old syntax, etc. - I maintain ~50 gems (over ~15 years now), which are constantly kept up to date. I've also been trying to obtain funding for years and never get any so I can't maintain backwards compatibility because it's too costly (on my time) and would lead to extreme burnout. This is why I release a *major* version each year because I adhere to Semantic Versioning in order to communicate that a the major upgrade might require some work on those that upgrade. If people don't want to upgrade right away, they can still stay on the old version but that means they basically have a year to get their act together and upgrade before this process repeats again a year later. Again, this all stems from Ruby being chaotic with the version releases. If Ruby had more reliable version releases based on Semantic Versioning it means I could possible not have to release a major version of my own work each year with much more longer lived gem versions. This also echoes what, **Josef** has pointed out above as well: It's the randomness of Ruby versions that is the killer. This year is even worse because I can't even tell if Ruby will be a 3.5.0 or 4.0.0 release. 😢 ---------------------------------------- Misc #21657: Question: Is Ruby 4.0 planned for December 2025 or later? https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/issues/21657#change-115047 * Author: dmitry.pogrebnoy (Dmitry Pogrebnoy) * Status: Feedback ---------------------------------------- Hello Ruby core team, I noticed that the first preview of Ruby 3.5 has been released, and at the same time there’s some talk in the community about Ruby 4.0 potentially arriving in December 2025. Could you please clarify what the current roadmap looks like? Is Ruby 4.0 already planned for this December, or is the next stable release still Ruby 3.5? Having a clear, public roadmap would really help library and tooling authors (like IDE vendors) prepare for upcoming versions and provide better support. Thank you! -- https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/

Issue #21657 has been updated by retro (Josef Šimánek).

Well no. This all stems from you following a very inefficient and user-unfriendly workflow (which you are entirely free to).

@byroot Well yes, I think I have clearly stated that your workflow could be also very inefficient and user-unfriendly (which you are entirely free to). I agree your workflow is in the end best for gem consumers, but it requires to follow closely Ruby core development to be able to react in time for potential changes. If you're not maintainer doing this and you can't provide this guarantee to your gems, it is clearly safer to get a bit more defensive and the way @dmitry.pogrebnoy does this is IMHO good balance in between both. It is well known fact Ruby releases around Christmas, and just getting early reminder to check gems are still OK once per year, test and release new versions including new Ruby versions is optimal. In the end, common consumers will see no difference for both workflows - once new Ruby is out, they can resolve bundle. I understand it is not simple to bring Semantic Versioning to Ruby, but please accept current versioning can cause those troubles and there is nothing wrong to ask. Ideally it would be nice to get friendly environment enough to let maintainer ask and get answer without being accused of being inefficient and providing user-unfriendly workflow.

I maintains 2x as many gems gems as you, with ~3000x as many downloads and I have none of your problems, and my users don't need to needlessly upgrade my gems. On every new ruby release, 99% of my gems don't need any change 🤷.

*So how does this work? Are you self-titled ultimate gems overlord now (having this many downloads) and only your workflow is friendly and efficient? This arrogant behavior will not help motivate maintainers to keep their good work. Each gem maintainer deserves respect. Amount of active maintainers is decreasing each year, a lot of gems are being abandoned. This is not helping IMHO. It used to be friendly safe space in here. :sad-panda:* ---------------------------------------- Misc #21657: Question: Is Ruby 4.0 planned for December 2025 or later? https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/issues/21657#change-115049 * Author: dmitry.pogrebnoy (Dmitry Pogrebnoy) * Status: Feedback ---------------------------------------- Hello Ruby core team, I noticed that the first preview of Ruby 3.5 has been released, and at the same time there’s some talk in the community about Ruby 4.0 potentially arriving in December 2025. Could you please clarify what the current roadmap looks like? Is Ruby 4.0 already planned for this December, or is the next stable release still Ruby 3.5? Having a clear, public roadmap would really help library and tooling authors (like IDE vendors) prepare for upcoming versions and provide better support. Thank you! -- https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/

Issue #21657 has been updated by vo.x (Vit Ondruch). I agree with @byroot that the upper bound restriction is from my experience very impractical. As a maintainer of Ruby in Fedora, once we update Ruby in the distribution, we also make sure that all other packages are compatible with it. In such situation, the upper bout restriction is unhelpful. There are multiple scenarios, I'll name randomly just a few: * There might be situations when such package passes it test suite, but later it is not usable just due to the metadata. * There might be restriction in some of the package dependency chain, but then we cannot know if the bigger dependency chain is problematic, because e.g we cannot even execute test suites of packages, which on itself does not have any restrictions. * If there is issue, contributing the fix to upstream is typically harder. It is one more thing which needs to be taken care of. Contributing fix, I want to provide solve the root cause, I don't want to maintain gemspecs, Gemfiles, CI settings etc. Mainly because various projects has various version support policies or capacities (and please don't take me wrong, sometimes our contribution maybe is just enabling CI for the latest Ruby version to highlight some problem). * Part of the problem also is that while upstream might do outstanding work and supports whole Ruby version matrix, maybe the maintainer in Fedora disappears or is busy and suddenly the gem version in Fedora lags behind upstream, causing all sorts of issues, because we generally keep just single version of package which needs to be compatible with the rest of ecosystem. ---------------------------------------- Misc #21657: Question: Is Ruby 4.0 planned for December 2025 or later? https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/issues/21657#change-115052 * Author: dmitry.pogrebnoy (Dmitry Pogrebnoy) * Status: Feedback ---------------------------------------- Hello Ruby core team, I noticed that the first preview of Ruby 3.5 has been released, and at the same time there’s some talk in the community about Ruby 4.0 potentially arriving in December 2025. Could you please clarify what the current roadmap looks like? Is Ruby 4.0 already planned for this December, or is the next stable release still Ruby 3.5? Having a clear, public roadmap would really help library and tooling authors (like IDE vendors) prepare for upcoming versions and provide better support. Thank you! -- https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/

Issue #21657 has been updated by mame (Yusuke Endoh). Just adding my two cents to the off-topic discussion. I honestly feel that the `~>` constraint was a terrible idea. It's going to be a huge pain when Ruby 4.0 is released (at the end of this year, perhaps?), and all the gems locked to `s.required_ruby_version = "~> 3.x"` fail to install. Setting an upper bound like this is ultimately bad for users. See https://github.com/ruby/rubygems/pull/4109. Feels like we haven't learned anything since the Ruby 3.0 release, have we? 😅 ---------------------------------------- Misc #21657: Question: Is Ruby 4.0 planned for December 2025 or later? https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/issues/21657#change-115071 * Author: dmitry.pogrebnoy (Dmitry Pogrebnoy) * Status: Feedback ---------------------------------------- Hello Ruby core team, I noticed that the first preview of Ruby 3.5 has been released, and at the same time there’s some talk in the community about Ruby 4.0 potentially arriving in December 2025. Could you please clarify what the current roadmap looks like? Is Ruby 4.0 already planned for this December, or is the next stable release still Ruby 3.5? Having a clear, public roadmap would really help library and tooling authors (like IDE vendors) prepare for upcoming versions and provide better support. Thank you! -- https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/

Issue #21657 has been updated by ufuk (Ufuk Kayserilioglu). retro (Josef Šimánek) wrote in #note-17:

@mame so why to release 4.0 if not causing major breaking changes?

Quoting [my answer to this](https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/issues/21657#note-3) from above:

... that is completely a decision for @matz (Yukihiro Matsumoto) to make as he wishes. Ruby version numbers don't follow semantic versioning, so 4.0 doesn't mean that there will be breaking changes.

---------------------------------------- Misc #21657: Question: Is Ruby 4.0 planned for December 2025 or later? https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/issues/21657#change-115075 * Author: dmitry.pogrebnoy (Dmitry Pogrebnoy) * Status: Feedback ---------------------------------------- Hello Ruby core team, I noticed that the first preview of Ruby 3.5 has been released, and at the same time there’s some talk in the community about Ruby 4.0 potentially arriving in December 2025. Could you please clarify what the current roadmap looks like? Is Ruby 4.0 already planned for this December, or is the next stable release still Ruby 3.5? Having a clear, public roadmap would really help library and tooling authors (like IDE vendors) prepare for upcoming versions and provide better support. Thank you! -- https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/

Issue #21657 has been updated by retro (Josef Šimánek). ufuk (Ufuk Kayserilioglu) wrote in #note-18:

retro (Josef Šimánek) wrote in #note-17:

...

@mame so why to release 4.0 if not causing major breaking changes?

Quoting [my answer to this](https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/issues/21657#note-3) from above:

...

... that is completely a decision for @matz (Yukihiro Matsumoto) to make as he wishes. Ruby version numbers don't follow semantic versioning, so 4.0 doesn't mean that there will be breaking changes.

@ufuk Sure, I'm aware of and I do fully respect this. Ruby itself is not simple to version, since next to the language (having amazing backwards compatibility usually) it is composed of various default and bundled gems, each having own versioning (I think mostly close to semantic) and vice versa. Writing this again (https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/issues/21657#note-3) brings nothing to the discussion. @mame I would not blame `~>` operator for being terrible idea. It works usually well for semantic versioning. I would blame the missing guidance for gem maintainers how to specify `required_ruby_version`. Per my understanding, the only current recommendation (based on gem specification policy) is to add lower boundary aka saying this is the oldest support Ruby. I do fully understand the defensive approach (as reported by OP) adding also upper boundaries. Both have pros and cons and none is the only good one. --- What are currently the most dangerous part to break gems with new Ruby release? I'm aware of some language changes (keyword args?) in Ruby 3.0, I'm aware of compiled extensions being broken sometimes (probably due to using private C APIs). Please share other cases if known. Random ideas: - introduce language standard versioning, that would make it clear both Ruby 3.4 and Ruby 4.0 are implementing same language standard (aka no breaking changes in language itself, safe to assume gem work in both versions, lock to this on gem level instead of Ruby version itself) - make gem metadata dynamic, let's maintainers update the released gem supported ruby version after release (not simple to introduce currently, since it will most likely break the gem security hashes) - that will add new tool to maintainers' hands to test their gems and update support matrix without cutting new release (possibly even automating this and let the gem decide on its own if passing CI test suite) - recommend not specifying upper ruby version boundary explaining Ruby core team puts some guarantees around this (maybe that's already happening and it is one gem specification policy away) ---------------------------------------- Misc #21657: Question: Is Ruby 4.0 planned for December 2025 or later? https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/issues/21657#change-115078 * Author: dmitry.pogrebnoy (Dmitry Pogrebnoy) * Status: Feedback ---------------------------------------- Hello Ruby core team, I noticed that the first preview of Ruby 3.5 has been released, and at the same time there’s some talk in the community about Ruby 4.0 potentially arriving in December 2025. Could you please clarify what the current roadmap looks like? Is Ruby 4.0 already planned for this December, or is the next stable release still Ruby 3.5? Having a clear, public roadmap would really help library and tooling authors (like IDE vendors) prepare for upcoming versions and provide better support. Thank you! -- https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/

Issue #21657 has been updated by mame (Yusuke Endoh). Status changed from Feedback to Closed Regarding the original topic of this ticket. I heard that @matz announced at RubyWorld Conference 2025 that the next release version will be Ruby 4.0.0. Also, Matz has set the master branch version to 4.0.0 as well. commit:6d81969b475262aba251e99b518181bdf7c5a523 Therefore, barring any major issues, the next version is expected to be 4.0.0. ---------------------------------------- Misc #21657: Question: Is Ruby 4.0 planned for December 2025 or later? https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/issues/21657#change-115141 * Author: dmitry.pogrebnoy (Dmitry Pogrebnoy) * Status: Closed ---------------------------------------- Hello Ruby core team, I noticed that the first preview of Ruby 3.5 has been released, and at the same time there’s some talk in the community about Ruby 4.0 potentially arriving in December 2025. Could you please clarify what the current roadmap looks like? Is Ruby 4.0 already planned for this December, or is the next stable release still Ruby 3.5? Having a clear, public roadmap would really help library and tooling authors (like IDE vendors) prepare for upcoming versions and provide better support. Thank you! -- https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/