active_support + extlib == BAD

[Gary Yngve]

Having an app include active_support and extlib may be hazardous to
your health.

The class_inheritable_attributes core extensions in extlib and active-
support are not compatible with each other, and using both at the same
time will cause the attributes to, in fact, not be inheritable.

More philosophically, ruby's standard library was lacking, so
active_support came around to save the day. But folks have recognized
that active_support is overly bloated, and that's why Merb created
extlib and Trans has been working on facets.

Merb currently requires use of extlib. Unfortunately, many other
libraries depend on active_support because of the rails-centric ruby
world, so it becomes a burden on the merbist to port libraries over
just to get rid of the active_support dependency. Maybe it's time for
Merb to be "support-agnostic" and allow for active_support or extlib,
as DataMapper has done? (I'm ignorant to if this is happening in the
1.2 branch)

[Paul Dlug]

On Fri, Jun 25, 2010 at 3:41 PM, Gary Yngve <gary....@gmail.com> wrote:
> Merb currently requires use of extlib.  Unfortunately, many other
> libraries depend on active_support because of the rails-centric ruby
> world, so it becomes a burden on the merbist to port libraries over
> just to get rid of the active_support dependency.  Maybe it's time for
> Merb to be "support-agnostic" and allow for active_support or extlib,
> as DataMapper has done?  (I'm ignorant to if this is happening in the
> 1.2 branch)

I'm facing the same issue, so far I've been able to patch some
libraries to be more restrictive in their use of AS so as not to stomp
on extlib but this is short term only. As much as I think AS is
bloated and awful I think you may be correct that it's time to
consider a hybrid or just a switch to it. It does look like recent
cleanups have made it easier to be selective in the AS pieces you use
("require 'active_support/all'" is evil).

Does anyone have an estimate on what it would take to do a hybrid vs.
just switching to AS? Any reason to keep extlib around if merb is the
primary (or only) user? I'd be happy to pitch in with this effort.

--Paul

[jonah honeyman]

On Tue, Jun 29, 2010 at 01:37:08PM -0400, Paul Dlug wrote:
> On Fri, Jun 25, 2010 at 3:41 PM, Gary Yngve <gary....@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Merb currently requires use of extlib. �Unfortunately, many other
> > libraries depend on active_support because of the rails-centric ruby
> > world, so it becomes a burden on the merbist to port libraries over
> > just to get rid of the active_support dependency. �Maybe it's time for
> > Merb to be "support-agnostic" and allow for active_support or extlib,
> > as DataMapper has done? �(I'm ignorant to if this is happening in the
> > 1.2 branch)
>
> I'm facing the same issue, so far I've been able to patch some
> libraries to be more restrictive in their use of AS so as not to stomp
> on extlib but this is short term only. As much as I think AS is
> bloated and awful I think you may be correct that it's time to
> consider a hybrid or just a switch to it. It does look like recent
> cleanups have made it easier to be selective in the AS pieces you use
> ("require 'active_support/all'" is evil).

Same here :\

ActiveSupport's pervasiveness in gems is really getting to be
bothersome. Especially for libs that are only using AS for one or two
things like basic string manipulation.

> Does anyone have an estimate on what it would take to do a hybrid vs.
> just switching to AS? Any reason to keep extlib around if merb is the
> primary (or only) user? I'd be happy to pitch in with this effort.

I started looking into it. It is getting more and more necessary to make
the switch to AS (IMHO, at least). While it is probably doable, merb is
so intertwined with extlib that it makes switching pretty annoying.

I'll be happy to help out as well. Not sure where to start exactly. I
guess removing the dependency for extlib and working from there?

In any event, this is a +1 for making the switch, or as Gary mentioned
allowing a choice like DM. It would be nice if PK & co. could pipe in
with whether this is realistic or not or if it is already on the agenda.

> --Paul
>
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--
-jonah

[Pavel Kunc]

Hi,

I wanted to run small poll weather we should switch Merb to AS or not.
Now it seems that voices which sounds in this google group wants to
move over to the AS. At least how it looks, I'd like to hear more
voices, really.

If the Yehuda already did removed the gem dependencies on the gems
such as memcache etc which was big problem for me we can start with
the either hybrid or pure AS changes. Yehuda wanted to remove these
dependencies really quickly at least on the EuRuKo when we had
opportunity to speak about that.

Also there is a question if we need any external library such as
Extlib or ActiveSupport. The DataMapper seems to get rid of the
dependency on both and use it's own inflector. Maybe the way forward.

My only concern is, saying it out loud, that I don't believe the Rails
community to care about something outside the Rails at all. I do trust
Yehuda but that unfortunately doesn't mean we won't get screwed by AS
in the future.

We can make the AS support, I'd vote for the hybrid one, happen in the
1.2 (which is current head). If we decide to remove the Extlib
completely I'd like to do it in the 1.3 and leave some time (1.2 -
1.3) as a transition.

Pavel

On Jun 30, 10:11 am, jonah honeyman <gewglestolemyp...@gmail.com>
wrote:

> On Tue, Jun 29, 2010 at 01:37:08PM -0400, Paul Dlug wrote:

[Pavel Kunc]

One more thing which scares me a bit are plugins. What if plugin will
require the Extlib?

Pavel

[Yehuda Katz]

Pavel,

As part of the general Rails 3 effort, we have put substantial time, energy and effort into precisely the sort of long-term guarantees for third-parties that you are looking for. For Railties, those guarantees are (of course) very focused on Rails applications.

For Action Pack, they are focused both on the long-term sustainability of the Rails plugin ecosystem and the usage of parts of the various libraries for other purposes. In particular, we have fashioned large swaths of Action Dispatch to serve as a sort of an enhanced Rack library, and people have been using Action View for non-web view rendering for some time.

In the case of Active Support, we have pulled out all the stops to make the library work well for third parties who simply want some of the Ruby enhancements. For shimming Ruby 1.8 and 1.9, we have isolated changes into "active_support/ruby/shim". We have made it possible to require any part of the Active Support library without knowing its dependencies on other parts of the library by mandating that every file in Active Support require its dependencies directly.

As of Active Support 3.0 final, you can be sure about the following going forward:

* require "active_support/anything" is a public API. We will not change the locations

  of these files going forward without proper deprecation notices, the same as when

  we change anything else in Rails.

* All classes and modules in ActiveSupport are public APIs, and we will not change

  the semantics of the public methods on them (unless they are marked as private API

  explicitly)

* we will consider breaking Active Support support for non-Rails third parties to be

  equivalent to breaking public APIs used by Rails plugins.

The Rails core team is fully committed to Ruby and the Ruby ecosystem going forward. We're going to have to prove it, but I am personally committed to this effort, and I know that other members of the Rails core team share my level of commitment.

Yehuda Katz
Architect | Engine Yard
(ph) 718.877.1325

[Tony Mann]

If the hybrid version did not take too long, then I like the idea of doing that for 1.2 and then ditching extlib in 1.3. If the hybrid turned out to be tricky or too time-consuming, then I would jump right to ditching extlib.

Since DM did the hybrid thing, it probably is workable, and we can look to that code base for inspiration. 

..tony..

[Pavel Kunc]

@Garry, Tony, Paul did you tried to use just the AS with the Merb? Any
information would be helpful for me if you hit some problems so I'd
know what t expect?

@yehuda OK sounds good, thanks for the lengthly and informative
response. I appreciate that you guys brought to the Rails ecosystem
these healthy changes.

Anyway more and more issues seems to be caused by the
incompatibilities which makes this a priority to solve for me
otherwise the Merb won't be usable for the current users which is
after all the most important.

Pavel

> >> merb+uns...@googlegroups.com <merb%2Bunsu...@googlegroups.com>.

> >> > > For more options, visit this group athttp://
> >> groups.google.com/group/merb?hl=en.
>
> >> > --
> >> > -jonah
>
> >> --
> >> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
> >> "merb" group.
> >> To post to this group, send email to me...@googlegroups.com.
> >> To unsubscribe from this group, send email to

> >> merb+uns...@googlegroups.com <merb%2Bunsu...@googlegroups.com>.

> >> For more options, visit this group at
> >>http://groups.google.com/group/merb?hl=en.
>
> >  --
> > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
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> > To post to this group, send email to me...@googlegroups.com.
> > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to

> > merb+uns...@googlegroups.com <merb%2Bunsu...@googlegroups.com>.

[Gary Yngve]

Pavel,

We did not try using just AS w/ Merb. The path of least resistance
for us seemed to be sticking w/ extlib and removing AS.
We're running DM 1.0 and Merb 1.1.2.

One caution about DM's means for proxying AS.. 3rd-party plugins
(e.g., aws) may do a casual check of
if defined? ActiveSupport
to see if active support (and assumedly, its methods) has been
loaded. So unless there are other reasons for it, defining
ActiveSupport may be less desirable than other alternatives.

-Gary


On Jul 10, 1:14 pm, Pavel Kunc <pavel.k...@gmail.com> wrote:
> @Gary, Tony, Paul did you tried to use just the AS with the Merb? Any

[Paul Dlug]

Pavel,

I was trying to use MongoMapper with merb and was able to get it to
work by changing 'require "active_support/all"' to more specific
requires of just the needed extensions. I think I lucked out in that
it doesn't seem to use extensions that conflict between the extlib and
AS versions. Requiring all of AS is pure evil anyway but I'm sure I
will hit the case shortly where there is overlap or competition
between extlib + AS.

--Paul

> To unsubscribe from this group, send email to merb+uns...@googlegroups.com.

[Paul Dlug]

Pavel,

I'm curious if you've started work on this and what the timeframe is.
I'm hitting problems mixing AS and extlib more frequently, it seems
the form builders make use of some items that differ in behavior
between the two libraries. I'm happy to help out with this conversion
since I have a very pressing need for it.

Thanks,
Paul