What's new in Pacer 1.0
===

We're very excited about the latest version of Pacer. We've used Pacer
0.9 for almost a year now and it's served us very well, but in that time
we found a few pieces that we weren't happy with. We've addressed those
issues and also made improvements in its architecture, consistency, and
performance. So, here's what's new in Pacer 1.0:

* The already comprehensive spec suite has been improved and also
  runs almost 10x faster.

* Graphs and elements are always wrapped. Previously, Pacer
  patched the raw Java classes to add the methods it needs in addition
  to allowing elements to be wrapped. By choosing to always use
  wrapping, we can provide a cleaner, easier, and more consistent
  interface.
* It uses the current [Tinkerpop](http://tinkerpop.com/) 2.1 stack with the most current versions
  of all of its supported databases including [Neo4j](http://neo4j.org),
  [Dex](http://www.sparsity-technologies.com/dex.php),
  [OrientDB](http://www.orientdb.org/index.htm), and
  [TinkerGraph](https://github.com/tinkerpop/blueprints/wiki/TinkerGraph). This is great news because
  the Tinkerpop stack and the graphs that it supports are constantly
  improving.
* The pacer-[graphdb] gems are no longer required but are all updated as a
  convenient way to get the dependent jars without the pain of using maven.
* Pacer can fully support all of [Blueprints](https://github.com/tinkerpop/blueprints/wiki)'
  WrapperGraph implementations. If you need the functionality behind one of the wrappers or want to
  create your own, simply initialize a new PacerGraph with the wrapped
  graph.
* Pacer is now able to fully support all [Gremlin](https://github.com/tinkerpop/gremlin/wiki) pipes including those
  that require PipeFunctions, making all features in Gremlin available
  to Pacer in addition to Pacer's own unique features.
* Many internal details of the implementation have been improved to make
  Pacer's source much easier to understand and extend. This provides a
  solid base on which to develop sophisticated projects.


Breaking changes and upgrade notes
---

Breaking changes have been kept to a minimum but there were a number of
places that we weren't happy with the previous implementation and have
addressed them.

* Pacer now requires [JRuby](http://jruby.org/) 1.7. This latest version of JRuby handles Java
  exceptions significantly more cleanly which eliminated a problem we
  previously had to work around in numerous places. In addition it is
  now in 1.9 mode by default, starts up faster, and conforms to the more
  recent Ruby 1.9.3 which brings valuable improvements to the standard
  Ruby libraries.

* To find an index, the `#index_name` method has been renamed to `#index`.
* All `#element_type` methods now return simply `:vertex`, `:edge`, `:mixed`
  or `:object`.
* The `#extensions` method sometimes returned a Set and sometimes an Array. Now it
  always returns an Array.
* Elements yielded to a block within a route no longer have the
  BlockFilterElement extension added to them. In the rare occasion that
  you need to use the `#back` or `#vars` methods within a block, they
  can be easily accessed by referring to the route itself within the
  block. To see an example, refer to the `as_spec.rb` file.