{"id":5397,"date":"2016-05-12T17:02:42","date_gmt":"2016-05-12T20:02:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.plataformatec.com.br\/?p=5397"},"modified":"2016-05-12T17:08:54","modified_gmt":"2016-05-12T20:08:54","slug":"keeping-your-ruby-on-rails-app-easy-to-update","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.plataformatec.com.br\/2016\/05\/keeping-your-ruby-on-rails-app-easy-to-update\/","title":{"rendered":"Keeping your Ruby on Rails app easy to update"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Rails 5 release candidate is out<\/a>, bringing new improvements that will make your life as a developer easier. Probably you are excited to update your application to the new major Rails release, but you may have some concerns. It is normal, updating your application to fit the new version may bring an unknown number of changes to work. On this blog post, I’ll give you some tips to keep the workload of updating at a minimum.<\/p>\n

You can try the new Rails version using the published guides<\/a> and report any problem you may find on Rails issue tracker<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Why update?<\/h2>\n

I think it is an important question you may need to answer to your team members. My favorite reasons are: security<\/strong>, bug fixes<\/strong>, and features<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Rails has supported versions to receive security fix releases. If you are in a version not supported, you may be vulnerable. You should read the security policies<\/a> and check if your app is using the supported versions.<\/p>\n

The framework also has maintenance policies<\/a> that you should be aware of. Performance improvements and bug fixes you may miss if your app is too old. You need to code by yourself and do workarounds to have the same benefits, a code that would be more reliable being inside the framework.<\/p>\n

We usually hear developers complaining about applications that use old versions of the framework. The reason is new versions of the tool usually bring improvements to make the developer’s life easier. In the developer’s perspective, it’s demotivating knowing there’s a robust, elegant and productive way to do things and they are not able to use it.<\/p>\n

Keeping your Rails up to date will help your code base health and also can be a factor of motivation for your team.<\/p>\n

What I should do?<\/h2>\n

We have been maintaining and evolving several old Rails apps in different contexts for years, and we have seen some practices that make it easier to keep your app updated:<\/p>\n