The JRuby team has announced the release of JRuby 1.6.0 Release Candidate 1. The final release is still a little way off but the bulk of the work is in place. It's billed as the "largest release of JRuby to date" which, given how awesome 1.5 was, is a big deal, especially as it adds initial Ruby 1.9.2 language and standard library compatibility (though 1.8.7 is still the "default").

You may imagine that the ruby-core mailing list is a 24/7 programming disco dealing with core Ruby implementation topics.. but no, it's usually a low-traffic list with calm discussion of bugs and patches. This week, however, some Interesting Stuff™ has happened and the kimono has been lifted on a few issues including, notably, a potential Ruby 1.8.8.

VCR is a library by Myron Marston that records your test suite's HTTP interactions so that they can be quickly replayed during future test runs. The big win is that you get predictable, quick and accurate tests. If you need to update the data, just delete the fixtures VCR generates and you're good to go.

Starting January 10, 2011 (just one week after this post), I'll be teaching an online Ruby course with CodeLesson.com - me being Peter Cooper, author of Beginning Ruby. It lasts 4 weeks and will cover most things a new Ruby developer (or programmer in general) needs to know to become a confident, intermediate-level Rubyist. It's a great springboard from which to move on to Rails or other more advanced Ruby topics.

It looks like California's the place to be if you're a Rubyist or Rails developer looking for a full-time position right now. 6 of today's 9 positions are in California with 5 of those in the Bay Area. Elsewhere, there are also positions in Texas, Illinois, and the UK. Good luck!

For better or worse, Ubuntu has become one of the most popular Linux variants on which to deploy Ruby and Rails apps. It was used for 84% of the 2010 Rails Rumble projects, for example. Back in 2009, I wrote a guide to installing a Ruby 1.8 stack on Ubuntu 8.10 so it was only a matter of time before I had to tackle 10.10 (Maverick Meerkat) and Ruby 1.9.

Christmas is a special time for Rubyists and not only for those of us taking the opportunity to get drunk and eat a lot. December 25 has been a popular release date since Ruby 1.0 was released on December 25, 1996 and several developers were preparing releases of their libraries and Ruby implementations this year too. So what December 25, 2010 bring?

Three months on from the 1.1 release, Rubinius 1.2 has hit the streets bringing together 242 commits from 10 developers. As well as the typical bugfixes and performance tweaks that come with any implementation update, 1.2 brings some underlying structural changes that set up the path to getting better Windows support, Ruby 1.9 support, and the removal of the much-loathed GIL (Global Interpreter Lock) in future releases.

The Rails 3 Way is the much awaited, Rails 3-focused followup to The Rails Way, a popular Rails book (and, dare I say, bible) by Obie Fernandez. It features forewords by David Heinemeier Hansson and Yehuda Katz and checks in at a desk-thumping 759 pages of full-on Rails 3 goodness (despite the book sites claiming 850 pages). I've given it the once-over.

Been missing esteemed rapper and author Coolio (real name Tony Arcieri) recently? He's been busy studying Ruby and building Cool.io (or GitHub repo), a Node.js and Sinatra inspired "event framework" for Ruby powered by libev. Think EventMachine but with a cuter, Sinatra-style API. cool.io isn't exactly new, though, it's a rewrite-meets-rebrand of Rev (which started life back in 2007).