Upgrade Rails from 6.0 to 6.1

This article is part of our Upgrade Rails series. To see more of them, click here opens a new window .

This article will cover the most important aspects that you need to know to get your Ruby on Rails opens a new window application from version 6.0 opens a new window to 6.1 opens a new window .

1. Preparations
2. Ruby version
3. Gems
4. Config files
5. Rails Guides
6. Removals
   • Railties
   • Action Pack
   • Action View
   • Action Mailer
   • Active Record
   • Active Storage
   • Active Support
7. Next steps

1. Preparations

Before beginning with the upgrade process, we have some recommended preparations:

• Your Rails app should have the latest patch version opens a new window before you move to the next major/minor version.
• You should have at least 80% test coverage unless you have a dedicated QA team.
• Follow a Git flow workflow to actively manage at least two environments: staging and production.
• Check your Gemfile.lock for incompatibilities by using RailsBump opens a new window .
• Create a dual boot mechanism, the fastest way to do this is installing the handy gem next_rails opens a new window . Find out more about how and why to dual boot opens a new window .
• To learn more about dual booting with non-backwards compatible changes you can visit this article opens a new window .

For full details check out our article on How to Prepare Your App for a Rails Upgrade opens a new window .

2. Ruby version

Rails 6.1 requires Ruby 2.5 opens a new window or later. Check out this table opens a new window to see all the required Ruby versions across all Rails versions.

3. Gems

Make sure you check the GitHub page of the gems you use for the project to find out its compatibility with Rails 6.1. In case you are the maintainer of the gem, you’ll need to make sure it supports Rails 6.1 and if it doesn’t, update it. A great site to checkout compatibility is RailsBump opens a new window .

4. Config files

Rails includes the rails app:update task opens a new window . You can use this task as a guideline as explained thoroughly in this post opens a new window .

As an alternative, check out RailsDiff opens a new window , which provides an overview of the changes in a basic Rails app between 6.0.x and 6.1.x (or any other source/target versions).

5. Rails Guides

It is important to check through the official Rails Guides opens a new window and follow any of the steps necessary for your application.

6. Removals

If you have ignored deprecation warnings on past version jumps, and haven’t been staying up to date with them you may find that you have issues with broken tests or broken parts of the application. If you have trouble figuring out why something is broken it may be because a deprecation is removed, so you can check through this list to see if this may be the case.

Railties

• Remove deprecated opens a new window rake notes tasks.

• Remove deprecated opens a new window connection option in the rails dbconsole command.

• Remove deprecated opens a new window SOURCE_ANNOTATION_DIRECTORIES environment variable support from rails notes.

• Remove deprecated opens a new window server argument from the rails server command.

• Remove deprecated opens a new window support for using the HOST environment variable to specify the server IP.

• Remove deprecated opens a new window rake dev:cache tasks.

• Remove deprecated opens a new window rake routes tasks.

• Remove deprecated opens a new window rake initializers tasks.

Action Pack

• Remove deprecated opens a new window ActionDispatch::Http::ParameterFilter.

• Remove deprecated opens a new window force_ssl at the controller level.

Action View

• Remove deprecated opens a new window escape_whitelist from ActionView::Template::Handlers::ERB.

• Remove deprecated opens a new window find_all_anywhere from ActionView::Resolver.

• Remove deprecated opens a new window formats from ActionView::Template::HTML.

• Remove deprecated opens a new window formats from ActionView::Template::RawFile.

• Remove deprecated opens a new window formats from ActionView::Template::Text.

• Remove deprecated opens a new window find_file from ActionView::PathSet.

• Remove deprecated opens a new window rendered_format from ActionView::LookupContext.

• Remove deprecated opens a new window find_file from ActionView::ViewPaths.

• Remove deprecated opens a new window format argument ActionView::Base#initialize.

• Remove deprecated opens a new window ActionView::Template#refresh.

• Remove deprecated opens a new window ActionView::Template#original_encoding.

• Remove deprecated opens a new window ActionView::Template#variants.

• Remove deprecated opens a new window ActionView::Template#formats.

• Remove deprecated opens a new window ActionView::Template#virtual_path=.

• Remove deprecated opens a new window ActionView::Template#updated_at.

• Make opens a new window locals argument required on ActionView::Template#initialize.

• Remove deprecated opens a new window ActionView::Template.finalize_compiled_template_methods and config.action_view.finalize_compiled_template_methods.

• Remove deprecated opens a new window support to calling ActionView::ViewPaths#with_fallback with a block.

• Remove deprecated opens a new window support to passing absolute paths to render template:.

• Remove deprecated opens a new window support to passing relative paths to render file:.

• Remove deprecated opens a new window support to template handlers that don’t accept two arguments.

• Remove opens a new window pattern argument in ActionView::Template::PathResolver.

• Remove opens a new window support to call private methods from object in some view helpers.

Action Mailer

• Remove deprecated opens a new window ActionMailer::Base.receive in favor of Action Mailbox.

Active Record

• Remove deprecated opens a new window methods from ActiveRecord::ConnectionAdapters::DatabaseLimits. column_name_length table_name_length columns_per_table indexes_per_table columns_per_multicolumn_index sql_query_length joins_per_query

• Remove deprecated opens a new window ActiveRecord::ConnectionAdapters::AbstractAdapter#supports_multi_insert?.

• Remove deprecated opens a new window ActiveRecord::ConnectionAdapters::AbstractAdapter#supports_foreign_keys_in_create?.

• Remove deprecated opens a new window ActiveRecord::ConnectionAdapters::PostgreSQLAdapter#supports_ranges?.

• Remove deprecated opens a new window ActiveRecord::Base#update_attributes and ActiveRecord::Base#update_attributes!.

• Remove deprecated opens a new window migrations_path argument in ActiveRecord::ConnectionAdapter::SchemaStatements.

• Remove deprecated opens a new window config.active_record.sqlite3.represent_boolean_as_integer.

• Remove deprecated opens a new window methods from ActiveRecord::DatabaseConfigurations.

• Remove deprecated opens a new window ActiveRecord::Result#to_hash method.

• Remove deprecated opens a new window support for using unsafe raw SQL in ActiveRecord::Relation methods.

Active Storage

• Remove deprecated opens a new window support to pass :combine_options operations to ActiveStorage::Transformers::ImageProcessing.
• Remove deprecated opens a new window ActiveStorage::Transformers::MiniMagickTransformer.
• Remove deprecated opens a new window config.active_storage.queue.
• Remove deprecated opens a new window ActiveStorage::Downloading.

Active Support

• Remove deprecated opens a new window fallback to I18n.default_local when config.i18n.fallbacks is empty.

• Remove deprecated opens a new window LoggerSilence constant.

• Remove deprecated opens a new window ActiveSupport::LoggerThreadSafeLevel#after_initialize.

• Remove deprecated opens a new window Module#parent_name, Module#parent and Module#parents.

• Remove deprecated opens a new window file active_support/core_ext/module/reachable.

• Remove deprecated opens a new window file active_support/core_ext/numeric/inquiry.

• Remove deprecated opens a new window file active_support/core_ext/array/prepend_and_append.

• Remove deprecated opens a new window file active_support/core_ext/hash/compact.

• Remove deprecated opens a new window file active_support/core_ext/hash/transform_values.

• Remove deprecated opens a new window file active_support/core_ext/range/include_range.

• Remove deprecated opens a new window ActiveSupport::Multibyte::Chars#consumes? and ActiveSupport::Multibyte::Chars#normalize.

• Remove deprecated opens a new window ActiveSupport::Multibyte::Unicode.pack_graphemes, ActiveSupport::Multibyte::Unicode.unpack_graphemes, ActiveSupport::Multibyte::Unicode.normalize, ActiveSupport::Multibyte::Unicode.downcase, ActiveSupport::Multibyte::Unicode.upcase and ActiveSupport::Multibyte::Unicode.swapcase.

• Remove deprecated opens a new window ActiveSupport::Notifications::Instrumenter#end=.

7. Next steps

If you successfully followed all of these steps, you should now be running Rails 6.1! Do you have any other useful tips or recommendations? Did we miss anything important? Share them with us in the comments section.

If you’re not on Rails 6.1 yet, we can help! Download our free eBook: The Complete Guide to Upgrade Rails opens a new window .