Ruby FAQ

The latest stable version of Ruby is 4.0.1. There are currently 4 actively supported versions and 11 versions that have reached end of life. Visit the Ruby Version Tracker on ReleaseRun for a complete breakdown of all versions, including release dates, support timelines, and end-of-life dates.

Ruby versions receive approximately 3.5 years of support: about 2 years of active maintenance followed by 1.5 years of security-only fixes. After EOL, no patches are released. Ruby releases new minor versions annually on Christmas Day.

YJIT is Ruby's built-in Just-In-Time compiler, introduced experimentally in Ruby 3.1 and production-ready since Ruby 3.2. It compiles Ruby bytecode to native machine code at runtime, providing 15-25% performance improvements for real-world Rails applications. Enable it with --yjit or RUBY_YJIT_ENABLE=1.

Rails 7.2 requires Ruby 3.1+. Rails 8.0 requires Ruby 3.2+. Always use a Ruby version that both your Rails version supports and that is still receiving security updates. As a rule, match the latest stable Ruby with the latest stable Rails for the best experience.