Removing MRI 1.9.2 support.
Removing Rails 3.1 support.
Switching out Sphinx 2.0.6 for 2.0.9, and adding 2.1.4.
Use Sphinx 2.1.x functions instead of variables by default.

This can be changed back to the old behaviour by putting this call in an initialiser: ThinkingSphinx::SphinxQL.variables!
Presuming excerpt data from Sphinx is UTF8 already.

This is the expected behaviour for Sphinx 2.1.x. For older versions, you'll want to add the following to your thinking_sphinx.yml file:

    development:
      utf8: false
Removing the UTF8 middleware from default stacks.

Sphinx 2.1.x returns UTF8 strings, but if you're using an older version of Sphinx (2.0.x), you can add the middleware in manually from an initialiser:

    ThinkingSphinx::Middlewares::DEFAULT.insert_after(
      ThinkingSphinx::Middlewares::Inquirer, ThinkingSphinx::Middlewares::UTF8
    )
    ThinkingSphinx::Middlewares::RAW_ONLY.insert_after(
      ThinkingSphinx::Middlewares::Inquirer, ThinkingSphinx::Middlewares::UTF8
    )
Specs using legacy behaviour if Sphinx version is definitely 2.0.x.