Trying out the Rails 2.0 preview releaseEdit

According to the instructions on the official Rails weblog all that's required to install the preview is:

sudo gem install rails --source http://gems.rubyonrails.org

The output is as follows:

Bulk updating Gem source index for: http://gems.rubyonrails.org
Install required dependency activesupport? [Yn]  Y
Install required dependency builder? [Yn]  Y
Install required dependency activerecord? [Yn]  Y
Install required dependency actionpack? [Yn]  Y
Install required dependency actionmailer? [Yn]  Y
Install required dependency activeresource? [Yn]  Y
Successfully installed rails-1.2.4.7794
Successfully installed activesupport-1.4.3.7794
Successfully installed builder-2.1.2
Successfully installed activerecord-1.15.4.7794
Successfully installed actionpack-1.13.4.7794
Successfully installed actionmailer-1.3.4.7794
Successfully installed activeresource-0.9.0.7794
Installing ri documentation for activesupport-1.4.3.7794...
Installing ri documentation for builder-2.1.2...
While generating documentation for builder-2.1.2
... MESSAGE:   Unhandled special: Special: type=17, text="<!-- HI -->"
... RDOC args: --ri --op /usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/doc/builder-2.1.2/ri --title Builder -- Easy XML Building --main README --line-numbers --quiet lib CHANGES Rakefile README doc/releases/builder-1.2.4.rdoc doc/releases/builder-2.0.0.rdoc doc/releases/builder-2.1.1.rdoc
(continuing with the rest of the installation)
Installing ri documentation for activerecord-1.15.4.7794...
Installing ri documentation for actionpack-1.13.4.7794...
Installing ri documentation for actionmailer-1.3.4.7794...
Installing ri documentation for activeresource-0.9.0.7794...
Installing RDoc documentation for activesupport-1.4.3.7794...
Installing RDoc documentation for builder-2.1.2...
Installing RDoc documentation for activerecord-1.15.4.7794...
Installing RDoc documentation for actionpack-1.13.4.7794...
Installing RDoc documentation for actionmailer-1.3.4.7794...
Installing RDoc documentation for activeresource-0.9.0.7794...

Note that this is actually a second preview release that the Rails team obviously pushed out without making any public announcement after the 1.2.4 release.

At first I didn't think this worked because on issuing:

rails --version

I got back:

Rails 1.2.4

But on visually inspecting /usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/rails-1.2.4.7794/lib/rails/version.rb I saw that it's merely because the Rail team doesn't bother to update these things.

I also did the usual FastRI index update:

fastri-server -b

To see what would happen if you tried updating an existing Rails app you can do:

rails -p PATH_TO_APP