Deprecate Support for Older Rails and Ruby Versions

[artinboghosian]

Summary

Should we deprecate support for older Rails and Ruby versions to simplify maintenance and leverage modern framework features?

Context

While implementing callback support and fixing Rails 7.1+ compatibility issues (#310), I've had to add version-specific conditionals throughout the codebase to accommodate breaking changes across Rails versions. This raises the question: is it time to drop support for older versions?

Current Support Matrix

Based on .github/workflows/ci.yml:

Ruby Versions:

• 2.5 (EOL: March 2021)
• 2.6 (EOL: March 2022)
• 2.7 (EOL: March 2023)
• 3.0 (EOL: March 2024)
• 3.1 (Security maintenance until March 2025)
• 3.2 (Active)

Rails Versions:

• 5.2 (EOL: June 2022)
• 6.0 (EOL: June 2023)
• 7.0 (Active, security fixes until June 2025)
• 7.1 (Active, security fixes until October 2026)

Maintenance Burden Examples

Recent fixes required version-specific code in multiple locations:

1. Migration API (test/test_helper.rb):
   • Rails < 5.2: ActiveRecord::Migrator.migrate
   • Rails 5.2-6.0: ActiveRecord::MigrationContext.new(path).migrate
   • Rails 6.0-7.0: ActiveRecord::MigrationContext.new(path, SchemaMigration).migrate
   • Rails 7.1+: Back to ActiveRecord::MigrationContext.new(path).migrate
2. Exception Handling (test/dummy/config/environments/test.rb):
   • Rails < 7.1: show_exceptions = false
   • Rails 7.1+: show_exceptions = :none
3. Callback Implementation (lib/wicked/controller/concerns/render_redirect.rb):
   • Ruby 2.x: Cannot use anonymous block forwarding (&)
   • Ruby 3+: Can use & syntax

Proposal

Consider deprecating support for:
Ruby versions: 2.5, 2.6, 2.7, 3.0

• Keep: Ruby 3.1+ only
  Rails versions: 5.2, 6.0 (past EOL)
• Keep: Rails 7.0+ only

Benefits

✅ Reduce version-specific conditionals and technical debt
✅ Leverage modern Ruby features (pattern matching, endless methods, block forwarding)
✅ Simplify CI matrix
✅ Focus testing efforts on actively maintained versions
✅ Easier onboarding for new contributors

Considerations

⚠️ Breaking change for users on legacy Rails/Ruby versions
⚠️ Would require major version bump (3.0.0)
⚠️ May impact adoption for teams with legacy applications