Ruby updated to version 1.9.3

We’ve updated the default version of the Ruby scripting language on our servers from 1.8.7 to 1.9.3.

The previous version 1.8.7 of Ruby is still available on our servers as /usr/bin/ruby1.8, and most scripts that use Ruby (including Rails) will “bind” themselves to a specific version like this to start with, so this change should not affect many Ruby users.

If you have any compatibility problems and your script uses the generic /usr/bin/ruby, you should change that to /usr/bin/ruby1.8 for now and work to fix your script for Ruby 1.9 compatibility.

(Similarly, Ruby 1.9.x can be explicitly specified as /usr/bin/ruby1.9.1 if you need it, avoiding problems when it’s upgraded in the future. Using specific versions also allows us to notify you before that version is removed.)