calagator.org on Rails 3

[Igal Koshevoy]

We're pleased to announce that our work on upgrading Calagator from Rails 2.3.x to 3.0.x has hit a major milestone: we're now running calagator.org off the "rails_3" branch.

This branch represents a great deal of time and effort, particularly by Reid. This code will be merged into "master" in the near future, once we're sure there aren't any surprises lurking.

This upgrade is mostly a benefit to the developers because it catches us up with the current releases of libraries in the Rails ecosystem. Although the start up is slower, the app will run faster because of a more streamlined framework and automatic deferred queries. This upgrade also lets us take advantage of a better query system and modular components called "engines" (e.g. we're using the same recent changes engine on multiple apps). 

If you have time, please try out the "rails_3" branch and report back any issues. Patches would be very appreciated.

Taking advantage of this upgrade will be easy for the rest of you. For example, to update a dev instance to the new code, I just needed to:

* Pull the changes and switch to the branch

* Install the dependencies: bundle

* Migrate the database: bundle exec rake db:migrate

* Run the tests: bundle exec rake 

* Run the app: rails server

-igal