Why is uglifier gem in default Rails Gemfile still of version 1.3.0?

Question

When creating a new Rails 4 app the default Gemfile has this in the gem list:

# Use Uglifier as compressor for JavaScript assets
gem 'uglifier', '>= 1.3.0'

This despite that the last official version of uglifier being 2.4.0

Am I missing something here or why the discrepancy in versions?

Answer 1

The bundler version specifier '>= 1.3.0' means at least version 1.3.0 should be accepted. In other words, using the current version 2.4.0 is just fine.

In fact, that's the installed version you're going to have when starting a new application from scratch. Just check your Gemfile.lock file for the actual installed versions of gems in your bundle. You'll probably find something like this:

uglifier (2.4.0)
  execjs (>= 0.3.0)
  json (>= 1.8.0)

Which means you have uglifier 2.4.0.

More info: http://guides.rubygems.org/patterns/#pessimistic_version_constraint