JRuby 1.1.6 now available on MacPorts

I really love how easy MacPorts makes installing packages on the Mac. If you own a Mac and develop software you are probably already using MacPorts. If you don't you should take a look and see what you're missing.

But sometimes the packages are a little out of date. This happened to me with Mercurial when 1.0 was released, and I'm sure it happens to others from time to time. Next time it happens, you might just be able to do something about it...

Yesterday I reinstalled JRuby from MacPorts but I got version 1.1.5 instead of version 1.1.6 which I was expecting. Charles suggested via twitter that I chase it up, so I spent the morning trying to get the JRuby port upgraded to the latest version so everyone could share the love.

Here's what I discovered:

1. The 1.1.6 port upgrade ticket had been filed a while back but wasn't closed and had apparently fallen through the cracks
   
2. When raising a ticket for a port upgrade attach a unified diff, not the whole portfile (this makes it easy to see what changed). Follow these steps.
   
3. If something is out of date then an email to the macports-dev mailing list will probably ensure it gets done

I jumped on the MacPorts IRC channel (#MacPorts) and the friendly guys gave me the above advice and made the change almost immediately.

How's that for service?