Updating Rails 2 to Rails 3 or 4

[M,Gopi M.gopinath]

Hi ROR folks,

                   Can anyone suggest me is there anyway to update rails
2.X application to Rails 3.X or Rails 4.X

Best Regards,

Gopinath M

[Walter Lee Davis]

On Jul 3, 2014, at 10:16 AM, M,Gopi M.gopinath wrote:

> Hi ROR folks,
>
> Can anyone suggest me is there anyway to update rails
> 2.X application to Rails 3.X or Rails 4.X

You may want to watch this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xi7z-vGNNGw

It depends a whole lot on your app, and how good your tests are already. It's easy (for certain definitions of easy), as the joke goes.

Walter

>
>
> Best Regards,
>
> Gopinath M
>
>
>
>
>
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[M,Gopi M.gopinath]

On Thu, Jul 3, 2014 at 7:49 PM, Walter Lee Davis <wa...@wdstudio.com> wrote:

On Jul 3, 2014, at 10:16 AM, M,Gopi M.gopinath wrote:

> Hi ROR folks,
>
>                    Can anyone suggest me is there anyway to update rails
> 2.X application to Rails 3.X or Rails 4.X

You may want to watch this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xi7z-vGNNGw

It depends a whole lot on your app, and how good your tests are already. It's easy (for certain definitions of easy), as the joke goes.

Walter

>
>
> Best Regards,
>
> Gopinath M
>
>

Hi,

                      Seems I need to say this first, The website which I have Know is 8 Years old website, Developed in Ruby 1.8.6 and Rails 2.3.6, and its as 220 tables in it and lot of controllers and views. Is there a way to update this to current version of rails and ruby. 

 

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[Hassan Schroeder]

On Thu, Jul 3, 2014 at 7:28 AM, M,Gopi M.gopinath <gopi1...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Seems I need to say this first, The website which I
> have Know is 8 Years old website, Developed in Ruby 1.8.6 and Rails 2.3.6,
> and its as 220 tables in it and lot of controllers and views. Is there a way
> to update this to current version of rails and ruby.

Yes, it's called "work". Apply liberally :-)

Seriously, there's no magic switch to flip that will vaporize that level
of technical debt.

The pain involved will be inversely proportional to the quality of your
tests, so I'd start there...

Good luck.
--
Hassan Schroeder ------------------------ hassan.s...@gmail.com
http://about.me/hassanschroeder
twitter: @hassan

[Jason Fleetwood-Boldt]

As was suggested to you by other posters, please read the upgrade guide carefully (here is the official one http://edgeguides.rubyonrails.org/upgrading_ruby_on_rails.html) 

it is recommended that you have very good test coverage before you begin. 

I suggest you use a tool like simple-cov to make sure all your lines of code are tested before you begin, as well I'd recommend integration coverage for every major end-user "happy path" through your app. 

When you are sure you have complete test coverage, change the version in the Gemfile and then run "bundle update rails"

[Rob Biedenharn]

The short answer is yes, but it is certainly not easy, nor can you make a single leap.

Simple-cov will not help you yet as it requires ruby 1.9.3 or better. (It's been so long that I can't even remember if there was a similar tool that worked with ruby 1.8.6.)

You may find it simpler to write a new app from scratch, importing (by the time-honored cut-and-paste method) the important bits of business logic.

However, if you want to proceed with an upgrade, this is roughly what you'd need to do:

• update to rails-2.3.18

There's really no reason not to and PLENTY of good reasons that you should have done this already.

2.3.9 (2010-09-04) was the version that first gave deprecation warnings for the upgrade to rails-3.0

2.3.18 (2013-03-18) was the last releast in the 2.3 line and contains fixes for at least 10 vulnerabilities (some of them quite serious!)

• get all your tests to pass (if you don't *have* tests, you'd better have faith)

• address all the deprecation warnings

• don't upgrade ruby yet

https://developer.uservoice.com/blog/2012/03/04/how-to-upgrade-a-rails-2-3-app-to-ruby-1-9-3/

But you might have to upgrade to ruby-1.8.7 as rails-3.0 doesn't officially support 1.8.6)

• upgrade to rails-3.0.0 (perhaps even directly to rails-3.0.20)

• get all your tests to pass

• upgrade to ruby-1.9.2 (or perhaps even ruby-1.9.3)

• get all your tests to pass

• upgrade to rails-3.1.12 (last of the rails-3.1 line)

This might not strictly be required, but 3.1 introduced the Asset Pipeline and also made jQuery the default JavaScript framework.

If you have much use of Prototype or Scriptaculous in your application, it would probably be a good idea to convert that to jQuery (and get https://github.com/rails/jquery-ujs)

• get all your tests to pass

• upgrade to rails-3.2.19

• get all your tests to pass

• upgrade to ruby-2.1.2 (there's probably no reason to just use 2.0 at this point)

• get all your tests to pass

• upgrade to rails-4.0.8

• get all your tests to pass

• upgrade to rails-4.1.4

• cope with the new secrets.yml file

• get all your tests to pass

• take a vacation

Seriously, there's a lot to do if you really want to go the upgrade route. I haven't even mentioned any of the issues that you're almost certain to encounter with gems that cease to function with newer versions of Rails or even newer Rubies. I'd recommend that you very seriously consider "refreshing" the application as a simpler way to bring the application onto a current, supported RoR stack.

-Rob

[Rob Biedenharn]

On 2014-Jul-3, at 15:49 , Rob Biedenharn <r...@agileconsultingllc.com> wrote:

On 2014-Jul-3, at 11:25 , Jason Fleetwood-Boldt <te...@datatravels.com> wrote:

As was suggested to you by other posters, please read the upgrade guide carefully (here is the official one http://edgeguides.rubyonrails.org/upgrading_ruby_on_rails.html) 

it is recommended that you have very good test coverage before you begin. 

I suggest you use a tool like simple-cov to make sure all your lines of code are tested before you begin, as well I'd recommend integration coverage for every major end-user "happy path" through your app. 

When you are sure you have complete test coverage, change the version in the Gemfile and then run "bundle update rails"

On Jul 3, 2014, at 10:28 AM, M,Gopi M.gopinath <gopi1...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi,

                      Seems I need to say this first, The website which I have Know is 8 Years old website, Developed in Ruby 1.8.6 and Rails 2.3.6, and its as 220 tables in it and lot of controllers and views. Is there a way to update this to current version of rails and ruby. 

The short answer is yes, but it is certainly not easy, nor can you make a single leap.

Simple-cov will not help you yet as it requires ruby 1.9.3 or better. (It's been so long that I can't even remember if there was a similar tool that worked with ruby 1.8.6.)

You may find it simpler to write a new app from scratch, importing (by the time-honored cut-and-paste method) the important bits of business logic.

However, if you want to proceed with an upgrade, this is roughly what you'd need to do:

• update to rails-2.3.18

There's really no reason not to and PLENTY of good reasons that you should have done this already.

2.3.9 (2010-09-04) was the version that first gave deprecation warnings for the upgrade to rails-3.0

2.3.18 (2013-03-18) was the last releast in the 2.3 line and contains fixes for at least 10 vulnerabilities (some of them quite serious!)

• get all your tests to pass (if you don't *have* tests, you'd better have faith)

• address all the deprecation warnings

• don't upgrade ruby yet

https://developer.uservoice.com/blog/2012/03/04/how-to-upgrade-a-rails-2-3-app-to-ruby-1-9-3/

But you might have to upgrade to ruby-1.8.7 as rails-3.0 doesn't officially support 1.8.6)

Oh, and I took a look at http://edgeguides.rubyonrails.org/upgrading_ruby_on_rails.html as suggested by Jason Fleetwood-Boldt and that has a MUCH more detailed walk though the upgrade process from 3.0 to 4.1. But if you don't have time to go and look at that yourself, then perhaps I've given you enough with which to weigh the upgrade v. rewrite paths.

-Rob

• upgrade to rails-3.0.0 (perhaps even directly to rails-3.0.20)

• get all your tests to pass

• upgrade to ruby-1.9.2 (or perhaps even ruby-1.9.3)

• get all your tests to pass

• upgrade to rails-3.1.12 (last of the rails-3.1 line)

This might not strictly be required, but 3.1 introduced the Asset Pipeline and also made jQuery the default JavaScript framework.

If you have much use of Prototype or Scriptaculous in your application, it would probably be a good idea to convert that to jQuery (and get https://github.com/rails/jquery-ujs)

• get all your tests to pass

• upgrade to rails-3.2.19

• get all your tests to pass

• upgrade to ruby-2.1.2 (there's probably no reason to just use 2.0 at this point)

• get all your tests to pass

• upgrade to rails-4.0.8

• get all your tests to pass

• upgrade to rails-4.1.4

• cope with the new secrets.yml file

• get all your tests to pass

• take a vacation

Seriously, there's a lot to do if you really want to go the upgrade route. I haven't even mentioned any of the issues that you're almost certain to encounter with gems that cease to function with newer versions of Rails or even newer Rubies. I'd recommend that you very seriously consider "refreshing" the application as a simpler way to bring the application onto a current, supported RoR stack.

-Rob

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[Jason Fleetwood-Boldt]

On Jul 3, 2014, at 3:49 PM, Rob Biedenharn <R...@AgileConsultingLLC.com> wrote:

Simple-cov will not help you yet as it requires ruby 1.9.3 or better. (It's been so long that I can't even remember if there was a similar tool that worked with ruby 1.8.6.)

I think this was the one we used to use back in the Ruby 1.8 days:

https://github.com/relevance/rcov

[tonypm]

Rob, this is a useful summary,  Thanks.

I face the same problem, having two large apps that are in constant development and so without putting a stop to development and focusing on upgrading (something that would be very hard to sell to one of my clients), I am strugling to see a way forward.  I have got to 2.3.18, and have been looking at when to upgrade Ruby, and keeping the right version of gems and rubygems seems to also be a challenge along the way.

For me at the moment, the greatest hurdle seems to be when I need to go to the asset pipeline in 3.1.  Your summary identifies that - thanks.  I am also using Prototype js, and am wondering whether I should migrate to JQuery along the way, or get as far as possible with Prototype.  There is not masses of js, but enough to make me wonder.  I have done some work on 3.1 with JQuery, but it could take some effort to implement that in my current codebase, and I get the sense that things will look quite different with the js at Rails 4 anyway.

In giving this ongoing thought,  I have been wondering if it would be possible to upgrade my apps in sections, by breaking them into separate functional areas, and making them separate apps (perhaps on separate servers).  My thinking being that this might make it possible to upgrade each section in turn (re-writing straight into Rails 4) and so break the workload down.  I have one section that handles mostly scheduled maintenance and this is a clear candidate. I would have to mirror the models, which might become very cumbersome though.

I haven't got very far with this thinking, and would be interested if anyone has any thoughts.  Another main issue that I can see is the need to provide consistent login when a user moves between the apps, but I think this should be achievable.

I have also seen some stuff written about using engines to help to break an app down into more manageable and separate parts and have thought that this might also be worth looking into at the same time.

Doing the upgrade in parts would also make it easier to ensure the parts being upgraded do have up to date tests.

I would be interested on any wisdom from others who have already trodden this path.


Thanks
tonypm

[Walter Lee Davis]

On Jul 14, 2014, at 6:46 AM, tonypm wrote:

> I am also using Prototype js, and am wondering whether I should migrate to JQuery along the way, or get as far as possible with Prototype.

I am still using Prototype in 4.1, this branch is the one that works without issues for me: https://github.com/anamba/prototype-rails

Walter