[LRUG] Upgrading a Rails v2.1.2

[Sidu Ponnappa]

Go all the way, but via 2.3. Basically 2.1.2 => 2.3.latest => 3.2

> I'm assuming that the upgrade to 2.3.4 should be reasonably straight forward
That depends on how much metaprogramming fun people have had on this
codebase and how many of your plugins made the transition from 2.1 to
2.3.

> One thing that is looming in the background is that the test coverage is, er, not 100% and that a lot of the code has been written a long time ago by coders who are no longer here.
The last time we did something like this for a client, it took seven
months. Most of this earned us no revenue because we estimated it
would take four weeks (the app had decent coverage) and billing our
client for this kind of miscalculation on our part would have been
unfair. *sigh*

> Anyone get any words of advice?  Is it worth the pain?
Not really. If the app is business critical, you just have to deal
with it. Just remember to set realistic expectations around delivery
timelines (anywhere from 2 weeks to several months :P) and ensure that
there is a development freeze in place on the codebase while the
migration is in progress. Also, don't do both Ruby and Rails at the
same time.

Best,
Sidu Ponnappa.
http://c42.in
http://rubymonk.com
http://twitter.com/ponnappa


On 5 March 2012 20:22, Chris Waters <chris at yougroup.co.uk> wrote:
> Hi LRUG,
>
> I've got a pretty large application (200ish model classes, 100ish
> controllers) that's been running happily(ish) for about 4 years now.
>
> It is Rails 2.1.2 running against Ruby 1.8.7.  It feels as though it is time
> that we brought things up-to-date as things are starting to creak.
>
>
> To my mind, there are 2 options;
> * we upgrade to v2.3.4 and be happy with that for now
> * or continue on from 2.3.4 and go the whole hog and get to v3.2
>
> One thing that is looming in the background is that the test coverage is,
> er, not 100% and that a lot of the code has been written a long time ago by
> coders who are no longer here.
>
> I'm assuming that the upgrade to 2.3.4 should be reasonably straight
> forward, and that the big leap to 3.2 is likely to hurt more.
>
>
> Anyone get any words of advice?  Is it worth the pain?  How many people out
> there are still running against 2.1.2?
>
>
> Thanks for any comments/help
>
> Chris.
>
>
> Chris Waters
> Lead Developer
> YOU Group
> _______________________________________________
> Chat mailing list
> Chat at lists.lrug.org
> http://lists.lrug.org/listinfo.cgi/chat-lrug.org