The first Rails 3.1 release candidate has been out for a couple weeks now, and the official release of 3.1.0 can’t be far behind.

Upgrading to Rails 3.1

I upgraded a Rails 3.0 app to 3.1 this past weekend, and all in all, it was a pretty smooth process. Along the way, I was grateful to discover a few helpful posts from developers that had already made this journey. If you’re getting ready to upgrade an existing app to Rails 3.1, or if you just want to get a feel for what to expect, I recommend checking out these write-ups.

• Read This Before Installing Rails 3.1 (Daniel Kehoe)
• How to Upgrade to Rails 3.1.0 (David Rice)
• Migrating My Blog over to Rails 3.1 Beta (Fabio Akita)
• Deploying a Rails 3.1 Application to Production (Richard Taylor)
• Upgrading to Rails 3.1 (RailsCasts)

More Rails 3.1 resources

If you’re already up to speed on all the new features in Rails 3.1, then you’re ready to give the upgrade a shot.

Still here? Well, I’m guessing that means you want to spend a bit more time wrapping your head around what’s new in Rails 3.1, and then you’ll be ready for the upgrade. Good news: you’ve got quite a few resources to lean on:

The big picture

• Rails 3.1 Release Notes (RailsGuides)
• Rails 3.1 Announcement and Overview (Aaron Patterson)
• Rails 3.1 Overview (RailsCasts)
• Changelog between 3.0 and 3.1 (Ryan Bates)

Individual features

• Asset Pipeline
  • Asset Pipeline Documentation (RailsGuides)
  • The Asset Pipeline and Our Post-Modern, Hybrid, Javascript Future (DHH’s Keynote at RailsConf 2011)
  • Understanding the Asset Pipeline (RailsCasts)
• HTTP Streaming
  • Why HTTP Streaming? (Xavier Noria)
  • HTTP Streaming (RailsCasts)
• CoffeeScript
  • CoffeeScript Basics (RailsCasts)
  • Official CoffeeScript Documentation (coffeescript.org)
• Sass
  • Sass Basics (RailsCasts)
  • Official Sass Documentation (sass-lang.com)
• Reversible Migrations (Rohit Arondekar)
• jQuery as the New Default JavaScript Library (Xavier Noria)
• ActiveRecord Identity Map (Josh Kalderimis)

Party on, dudes

If Rails 3.1 has piqued your curiosity, it’s definitely worth a quick spike to try out an upgrade. Just create a branch and give it a shot. After all, you wrote all those tests for a reason, right? Take Rails 3.1 for a spin, and let your test suite tell you where things need to be patched up. What have you got to lose? Party on, Dudes!

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Updated 8/27/2011 - Added links to the asset pipeline docs from Ryan Biggs and the new RailsCasts episode on “Understanding the Asset Pipeline.”

Updated 9/6/2011 - Added link to the new RailsCasts episode on “Upgrading to Rails 3.1.” Added link to the official Rails 3.1.0 release announcement and release notes.