#114 🚀 Latest Ruby & Rails Updates, ERB Syntax changes, Grokking, Bundler, Minitests & more…

Happy Wednesday!

Here is issue #114 of our newsletter, which offers news and the best tools for your current or future Rails projects…

1. 👢👢 Upgrading from Rails 3.0 to 3.1 may present ERB syntax issues, but strategies like branching changes, view conditionals, or workarounds can help manage dual compatibility and ease the upgrade process. ​Fiona’s​ newest article, ​Handling ERB Syntax Changes for Form Helpers in Rails 3.1​, breaks down these methods, making dual booting achievable despite its challenges.

2. 🚀 In this article, ​How to grok a Rails application for the first time​, ​Francois​ walks you through the process of truly understanding (or grokking) an existing Rails app for the first time, with our refined process.

3. 🚀 New releases: Check out ​Rails Versions 6.1.7.10, 7.0.8.6, 7.1.4.2, and 7.2.1.2.​ These address a single bug in last week’s security releases in the ‘block_format’ helper.

4. 🔔 ​Rails 7.1.5 and 7.2.2 have been released​. These are regular bug fix releases. This will likely be the last set of bug fixes for the 7.1 series, which will continue receiving security patches until October 1, 2025. Rails 7.2 will continue to receive bug fixes like this until August 9, 2025, followed by another year of security patches.

🚨​​Running unsupported Rails? Need to catch up little by little? Try 🌳​ ​Bonsai​​​​

​​​FastRuby.io​​’s 🌳 Bonsai Service offers affordable monthly maintenance plans to ensure your Rails app stays secure, up-to-date, and supported. If your app is still running Rails 6.1 or below, now is the time to upgrade and avoid potential vulnerabilities. 🚀

5. 🚀 Key Takeaways from the article ​Shared Examples with Minitest - Anti-pattern​​

• The test doesn’t need to be DRY.
• If you can’t look at an individual test and understand precisely what’s going on without looking through several before blocks or nested contexts, something is probably wrong.
• There are times when it might make sense to have reusable tests (This article shows you how to do it with Minitest).

6. 💎 Even simple syntax elements can influence coding style, affecting readability, class design, and overall code perception, often guiding specific approaches subtly. Throughout this article, "Useless Ruby sugar": Numbered block parameters​, the author highlights the importance of how code reads as a whole, emphasizing that syntax can enhance clarity, flow, and efficiency in large systems.

7. 💎 A ​new version of Bundler was released​ this week. Check out the enhancements, bug fixes, and updates to the documentation.

8. 🔥 In this article, ​Next Generation Out of Band Garbage Collection​​, we learn how to improve performance by moving the garbage collection process to occur after the request finishes.

👀 Check out our other articles on: ​​Performance​​ | ​Upgrades​​​ | ​​​Best Practices​​​ | ​​​Tech Debt​​​

Bookmark them, share them, or save them. We hope you found these links helpful 😉

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Best,

The ​​​​​FastRuby.io​​​​​ Team

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