It seems as if there is an md5sum file to list the files in
ftp://ruby-lang.doc/doc but not for the ruby sources for the stable
and 1.9. How come? As far as the 1.9 series is concerned, are the even
numbers stable or are they gradual improvements?
The md5sums are on
http://www.ruby-lang.org/en/downloads/ for the link
posted there (I would say current release but as it often happens the
page is one release back), and in ruby-talk release announcements for
other versions. I also find this state suboptimal but nobody
volunteered to write an up-to-date list of release tarballs so that's
how things are.
As for 1.9 it is not going to be stable at least until it is released
as 2.0. Although there are less visible changes now it is a
development version of Ruby and incompatible changes can still happen.
There are still ongoing discussions about features that are wanted in
the 2.0 release and the best ways to implement them, or at least there
were recent overflows of these discussions into lists I receive.
Thanks
Michal
