Feature #16963: Remove English.rb from Ruby 2.8/3.0

• Status: Assigned
• Priority: Normal
• Assignee: hsbt (Hiroshi SHIBATA)
• Target version: -

[hsbt (Hiroshi SHIBATA)]

English.rb is no longer maintained by ruby core team.

Can we remove it from our repository? The users can install if from rubygems.org now.

[retro (Josef Šimánek)]

I'm all in for this since this one will help to "normalize" standard library naming (this one is also having "exotic" file name with capital first letter).

[hsbt (Hiroshi SHIBATA)]

• Status changed from Open to Assigned

mame@gem-codesearch:~$ csearch "require 'English'" | wc -l
866
mame@gem-codesearch:~$ csearch "require \"English\"" | wc -l
273

We found the usage of English.rb like capybara that is the famous gem. I have a bit of aware to affect this proposal.

[deivid (David Rodríguez)]

I'm surprised by the low usage you found anyways, since rubocop and its style guide recommend English and enforce it by default. Honestly, I'd like all English names to be there by default without having to require anything.

[hsbt (Hiroshi SHIBATA)]

• Related to Feature #14138: Define English.rb aliases by default and eliminate the library added

[hsbt (Hiroshi SHIBATA)]

@deivid (David Rodríguez)

See #14138 . We have a plan to remove it at Ruby 3.

[deivid (David Rodríguez)]

Nice, I didn't know that. Something I don't quite get is, if the functionality of English will be the default (in ruby 2.8, I guess?), what's the point of gemifying it?

[Eregon (Benoit Daloze)]

I think we should define these aliases in core, and then English.rb does nothing.

Removing it from the standard library seems too incompatible to me.

[deivid (David Rodríguez)]

Agreed!

We should at least add a warning on top of English.rb for a full release cycle before removing it.