Is Merb 1.1 coming or not?. Whats up with Merb?

[MyMerb]

Hi,

I would like to ask this question to all Merb developers specially ...
(1) Yehuda and (2) Matt from Merb Core Team.

Pl. be frank and honest.

Question 1:- Is Merb 1.1 really coming, or plans are dropped

Question 2:- Will the Merb progress die after Rails 3.0

Question:- Why there are no updates on Merb Information and Merb
Book..?

Question:- Is Merb Core Team willing, All Merb developers should shift
to Rails 2.3.2 as soon as possible...?

Question:- Which great asests of Merb are coming in Rails 3.0..?

Finally...

Question:- Should we stick to Merb or move away to Rails as soon as
possible..?

To Merb Core Team...

It seems Merb community is decreasing day by day. Yehuda had specially
mentioned in this forum in December 2008 to remind him, if any Merb
developer thinks that he is moving away from his promise.

I think that time has come to remind him that Merb Community still
exists.. It seems New Router and Controller progress has killed his
focus and love towards Merb

Once upon a time, Merb was flooded with questions and tips. It all has
become a history now. Now.. I am also worried about my future with
Merb.

I hope many other developers are passing through this stage.

MyMerb

[Ezra Zygmuntowicz]

On Jun 27, 2009, at 8:34 PM, MyMerb wrote:

>
> Hi,

I'd like to chime in and say that I am still happily building apps
with merb, http://engineyard.com/solo is built on merb. I don't find
that there is anything I'm missing or that there are any features or
major bugs stopping me from building apps with merb.

If merb works for you then use it, it is very stable and runs well in
production. If you need the newest shiniest features all the time then
rails is probably getting more love these days and may be a better
option for you.

I'll let Yehuda and Matt chime in on the other questions specifically
but I just wanted to say that merb is solid as is, it works and runs
very well in production. I think merb is kind of feature complete and
extensible enough that you can build whatever you want with it as a
solid foundation.

Cheers-
Ezra (happy merb user)

[Nicholas Orr]

Only thing I'm keen for is the run_later fixes for using with passenger...

Since I only have one app that needs run_later in production and that is only for updating something once a month. I simply spool up a thin instance on another port and update. Shut it down after it is done and I'm on my way.

I've nearly finished a 2nd production merb app and everything is great :)

All the funky stuff coming in the router would be "nice to have" - it is not like I need them or my app wont work...

Merb right now works really well and is very flexible. I say kudos to the merb dev team and thanks for a solid framework that lets me get on with what I want to do ;)

Nick

[scottmotte]

I'd would agree with Ezra that Merb is solid. I've built 3 production
apps and working on a fourth.

However, even though Merb was solid, there was a lot of good stuff
planned for Merb 1.1 back on March 2nd, 2009. (but these weren't
promises just hopes)
- ruby 1.9 compatibility
- namespaced applications
- active orm
- run_later
- thor improvements

There was the impression/promise that Merb apps would provide a
migration path to Rails 3. That's probably my biggest concern right
now.

Additionally, I'm still in the camp that it was a mistake to go to
Rails. It's been months of refactoring work for Yehuda - the majority
of which was already a core part of merb it seems to me. And I know
for a fact Yehuda has been very very busy. He deserves a medal for
taking on that code. You've seen his blog posts. Holy cow it's a ton
of work refactoring rails. I think the Merb/Rails framework would have
been quite further along if half the effort in refactoring rails was
put towards Merb.

Having said all that, these are just my opinions. I haven't
contributed any code, and these guys know better than a non-committer
like me. I've had the pleasure of meeting Matt, and I can say that we
are lucky as a community to have such smart and giving dudes - Yehuda,
Matt, Carl, Ezra and others.

On Jun 27, 11:07 pm, Nicholas Orr <nicholas....@zxgen.net> wrote:
> Only thing I'm keen for is the run_later fixes for using with passenger...
> Since I only have one app that needs run_later in production and that is
> only for updating something once a month. I simply spool up a thin instance
> on another port and update. Shut it down after it is done and I'm on my way.
>
> I've nearly finished a 2nd production merb app and everything is great :)
>
> All the funky stuff coming in the router would be "nice to have" - it is not
> like I need them or my app wont work...
>
> Merb right now works really well and is very flexible. I say kudos to the
> merb dev team and thanks for a solid framework that lets me get on with what
> I want to do ;)
>
> Nick
>

> On Sun, Jun 28, 2009 at 1:51 PM, Ezra Zygmuntowicz <ezmob...@gmail.com>wrote:
>
>
>
> > On Jun 27, 2009, at 8:34 PM, MyMerb wrote:
>
> > > Hi,
>
> >        I'd like to chime in and say that I am still happily building apps

> > with merb,http://engineyard.com/solois built on merb. I don't find

[Julian Leviston]

Yeah I'm pretty crapped off that the book that I paid for is
apparently not coming from manning any more... and manning don't reply
to my emails.

Julian.

[Alistair Holt]

I bought the book too which does seem to have died a long time ago.
Surely Manning should be refunding their customers for buying a book
which it looks like is never going to be produced.

> >>> with merb,http://engineyard.com/soloisbuilt on merb. I don't find

[Yehuda Katz]

I'm going to take the time this weekend to thoughtfully respond to this thread. With regard to the book, I expected that people received an email from Manning explaining that the book has been switched to Rails 3 in Action, which we are currently working on. Unfortunately, since Rails 3 was up in the air as we were working on it, it was hard to get started without having to radically change the book as we moved forward.

The idea of the Rails 3 in Action book is to cater to folks who are interested in configuration their framework and learning the power of the internals. So it won't be a beginner book, but it should be everyone's second Rails book. I hope that helped answer your question.

-- Yehuda 

--
Yehuda Katz
Developer | Engine Yard
(ph) 718.877.1325

[Matt Aimonetti]

I'm not at home but I'll also reply later on today or tomorrow.

- Matt

Sent from my iPhone

[Julian Leviston]

Well I think it morphed into a Rails 3 book - but the point is
customer service 101 stipulates that you really should tell your
customers what's going on...

Julian.

[Julian Leviston]

About the book - yeah, that's cool, and I vaguely remember being sent this email (I think!) but my point is that there is nothing on their website about the switchover, they have practically zero communication about it, and I've emailed twice now to say what's going on and received zip response.

Compare this to the kind of service you get from the pragprog guys, and you get to see my point a little.

Julian.

[Yehuda Katz]

I understand your frustration, but to be fair, from the Manning site:

Note from Publisher: Because Rails 3 in Action is replacing Merb in Action, if you order now, we'll send you the chapters developed so far for Merb in Action, and you'll start receiving new chapters based on Rails 3 as soon as they become available.

In December 2008, the Merb team announced that they will be collaborating with the Rails core team on the next versions of Merb and Rails. Rather than maintaining parallel tracks, Merb 2 and Rails 3 will merge, preserving the flexible configuration and advanced features that Merb users love along with the rapid productivity and ease-of-use that makes Rails shine. As Engine Yard developer (and Manning author) Yehuda Katz puts it, "Effectively, Merb 2 is Rails 3."

We're also in the process of working up another email to MEAP subscribers; I'll try to find out why your email wasn't responded to.

-- Yehuda

[Julian Leviston]

Yeah, I know that.

However... this says nothing about what will happen with existing orders, does it?

Julian.

[Patrick Aljord]

The thing I'm more concerned is the 1.1 release we were promised and even more important, the "easy" upgrade path to rails 3 we were promised by releasing several versions of merb that would deprecate poco a poco the old api to make it more simple to upgrade to rails3. At least that's what I remember from the blog posts announcing the rails+merb merge but I might be wrong.

[Yehuda Katz]

Again, there'll be more tonight, but we are ABSOLUTELY still planning on an easy transition path. Since we announced the merge, we've been working hard on cleaning up the internals of Rails so that such an upgrade path would be possible. As I said at the time, a transition from one API to another is relatively trivial, but a transition from a known API to the wilderness is not. Several times, we've looked at starting to write some transitional APIs for Merb, but realized we weren't far enough along in the Rails work to justify doing so without really dicking around the Merb users. I think we're finally far enough along to justify taking another stab at some transitional work, though. More details later tonight :)

-- Yehuda

On Sun, Jun 28, 2009 at 7:21 PM, Patrick Aljord <pat...@gmail.com> wrote:

The thing I'm more concerned is the 1.1 release we were promised and even more important, the "easy" upgrade path to rails 3 we were promised by releasing several versions of merb that would deprecate poco a poco the old api to make it more simple to upgrade to rails3. At least that's what I remember from the blog posts announcing the rails+merb merge but I might be wrong.

[Julian Leviston]

Nice! :)

It's a bit of a tip of the hat to merb, really... that it's taking a while to bring Rails up to the integration point...

Wickkkkked :)

Julian.

[Yehuda Katz]

The promised post.

First of all, I'd like to freely admit that I haven't been putting much effort into Merb over the past few months -- certainly less effort than I expected. The reasons are a bit complex and multilayered.

First of all, working on Rails is a tremendously complex endeavor. Virtually every area Carl and I go into starts a monthlong (or longer) effort to understand the codebase, do some refactoring work, and try to understand how it fits into the long-term goals (which include a Merb transitional plan). Most importantly, since January, we have been working basically non-stop on refactoring/rewriting ActionController::Base. That work is not exactly complete yet, but we did a lot more than we expected, at the cost of more time than we expected.

If you look at Merb, it's mostly an analogue to Railties and ActionPack. ActiveRecord, ActiveSupport and ActiveResource have no analogue in Merb. As a result, a transition from Merb to Rails mostly involves a clear path from merb-core to ActionPack. Specifically, Merb controllers need to both live side-by-side with Rails controllers (this means the router needs to be able to dispatch to them, for instance), and it needs to be possible to reimplement Merb's controllers in terms of a stripped down version of Rails' controllers. In current master, that means writing a Merb::Controller that inherits from ActionController::Http, an extremely simple, fast version of Rails controllers with opt-in components.

All the work we have done so far (and some we have yet to do) will make that transition possible. We could have started releasing some transitional releases over the past six months, but that would have been mostly guesswork, and we likely would have needed several different releases, requiring app changes, as we continued our work in Rails. As Ezra said, Merb is mostly stable at this point, and we'd like to keep it that way until we can offer something clear and compelling. We have some more work to do, but making it possible to transition smoothly remains a high priority for the Rails 3 release for Carl and I.

With regard to the rest of the plans for Merb 1.1, some of them will likely be making it into a release pretty soon, while others will need to wait a bit longer. For instance, when we release a new router for Merb, we want it to be the one that will be available in Rails. Since that work is still ongoing, we're holding off on providing something unstable that will require multiple changes to your apps. On the other hand, improved bundling can come pretty soon; Carl and I will be working on app-agnostic bundling during our work on the initializer and should have something that works with Merb. Of course, bundling is a complex topic and we want to get it right.

I know it sucks a little to be in this holding pattern, but we absolutely have not forgotten about Merb (for example, Solo/Flex is still a thriving Merb app--feeling good about asking them to upgrade to a transitional release is a big part of the criteria for doing such a release); we just want to make sure that when it comes time for us to ask people to start moving, we can do so with confidence.

Hope that answers some of your questions--the delay has been more about shielding you guys from the vagaries of Rails edge than anything else.

-- Yehuda

[Julian Leviston]

Hey Yehuda,

It doesn't suck at all, it just helps to have perhaps bi-weekly
(monthly?) updates on what's going on - even if it's just "we're still
working on blah" ;-)

The communication is key. We DEFINITELY realise that the ground is
different than a map of the ground.... so any anticipation vs reality
is most likely going to differ from each other...

Julian.

[Patrick Aljord]

Thanks Yehuda, sounds good. I agree with Julian on getting more frequent updates about the status of Rails3/Merb2 even if things are not quite ready yet.

Cheers,

Pat

[MyMerb]

I am surprised and shocked to see 2 diffreent answers from the authors
of the same book." Rails 3 in Action. "

Yehuda says.... " Merb 2 == Rails 3
Which we all appreciate, and they are working hard on that promise

Mike G recently said on Tweeter... " Merb is dead "
Chk here http://bit.ly/176Ol

I cannot understand, how can Mike G can make such statement, being a
responsible author of a book when Yehuda and Carl are putting their
Blood and Sweat in their Merb 2 == Rails 3 promise.

I strongly object this Merb statement by Mike G1

[Julian Leviston]

I guess you just need to get over that, then.

Take what you need from where you take it, and leave what you don't ;-)

Julian.

[Jan]

Thanks Yehuda, your post brings me more confidence :)

-J

* Yehuda Katz <wyc...@gmail.com> [2009-06-28 22:31:54 -0700]:

> The promised post.

--
jan=callcc{|jan|jan};jan.call(jan)

[Matt Aimonetti]

See my comments below:

On Sat, Jun 27, 2009 at 8:34 PM, MyMerb <mym...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi,

I would like to ask this question to all Merb developers specially ...
(1) Yehuda and (2) Matt from Merb Core Team.

Pl. be frank and honest.

Question 1:- Is Merb 1.1  really coming, or plans are dropped

Merb 1.1 has been almost ready for a few weeks now. I was waiting for Carl's new router but as Yehuda explained things are not simple and maybe we should consider releasing 1.1 without the new router.
 

Question 2:- Will the Merb progress die after Rails 3.0

The current core team won't be working on new features since we are working on Rails 3.0, but Merb will still be supported as will Rails 2.x be.

 

Question:- Why there are no updates on Merb Information and Merb
Book..?

Mainly because we've all been really busy, that's certainly not a good excuse. I'm personally really busy at work, decided to spend more time with my family and also got involved in MacRuby on top of the Rails team.

We'll make an effort to communication better.

 

Question:- Is Merb Core Team willing, All Merb developers should shift
to Rails 2.3.2 as soon as possible...?

I'd not recommend to switch from Merb to Rails 2.3.2, Merb is very stable and used by a lot of companies such as wikimedia, adobe, EY, many of my clients and many more. You should switch to Rails3 when it will be ready tho.
 

Question:- Which great asests of Merb are coming in Rails 3.0..?

There are a lot of posts about that, check the latest rails conf talks.
 

Finally...

Question:- Should we stick to Merb or move away to Rails as soon as
possible..?

See previous answer above.



Regarding migration path... Since Rails3 isn't ready, there isn't much to migrate to. Engine Yard put Yehuda and Carl to work full time on Rails and I hope they will get them to work on the migration. My guess is that it will happen since they will need this migration for themselves (solo/flex).


Note that I totally understand your frustration. You got used to a bi-monthly release cycle and 1.1 still isn't out. I'm myself also a bit sad to notice that so little effort put on Rails is enriching Merb yet. However, I do believe things will change once Rails3 will be more mature and we will be able to start exchanging code.

- Matt

p.s: remember that Merb is a Free Open Source project and that it won't die. A new team is still free to keep on working on the framework if they see that's the way it should be.

[MyMerb]

Thanks Matt for answering all my questions honestly and perhaps better
than what i had expected.

Regarding Merb 1.1...
It would be better to go as per your old plans ( as mentioned on your
blog ). We all are waiting for new router and having Merb 1.1 without
new router does not sound a nice solution.

We already have waited a lot. A little more waiting will encourage us,
since we at least know whats going on. We are no more shooting in dark
now.

An informative explanation by Yehuda and Yours, have made our life
more happier as a Merb developer.

I think.. you should come out with New Router in Merb 1.1

Pl. take more opinions here, may be others share my idea or have
different ideas.

Thanks

[Durlabh]

I agree with MyMerb.

Merb 1.1 as per old plans + New router is a best way to go.

I am ready to wait. A little more waiting is no harm

My +1 support to MyMerb.

You should put this as a blog and ask for more suggestions.

[Liosha.Syrnikov]

I think better release Merb with Ruby 1.9 support now, and later merb
with new router release.

[MilesTogoe]

in fairness to the Merb core team who graciously puts out great stuff,
I'm not sure some of you truly understand how open source works, but
you're really encouraged to get involved. Code agendas are set by those
who write code - albeit, most contributors are happy to take
suggestions. If you don't wish to contribute, then you're free to
simply take advantage of whatever comes along (I'm guilty of frequently
doing this), but if you WANT certain features, then it's up to you to
take the initiative and just do what you can and commit. In this case,
if you're using Merb, then you're certainly capable of writing a blog or
probably better, adding a wiki page yourself - I'm sure that whatever
help you need to post it at the merb web site will be forthcoming. By
doing some of the grunt work yourself, the core team can concentrate on
more difficult tasks.

[Asche]

I agree, 1.9 support is my #1 desire.

On Jun 29, 8:55 am, "Liosha.Syrnikov" <liosha.syrni...@gmail.com>
wrote:

[Matt Aimonetti]

We are now looking into potentially releasing a 1.0.12 with some bug fixes and a 1.1 a bit later.
Since we are waiting for the Rails router to finalize, we might push 1.1 without the router and then push another release with the router when Rails3 stabilizes. Nothing sure yet.

- Matt

[SoftMind]

Hi,

I would also like to go as per Matt's plans as discussed on his blog.

My +1 for old plans.

BTW... How far we are now from New Router?

Thanks

[Matt Aimonetti]

1.0.12 got pushed: http://yehudakatz.com/2009/06/30/merb-vulnerability-fix-1-0-12/  and we are working on 1.0.13 with some bug fixes I mentioned earlier.
Regarding the router, the best thing to do is to ask Carl. But as we explained we are anyway waiting for the Rails router to be in place so we can do an easy migration for Rails3.

- Matt

[Paul]

So why not lots of little releases? Leave the router for 1.2, or 1.15,
or whenever its done. Just have one minor release for every little
feature that brings us closer to rails. I'd much rather my migration
path be of small steps, at a pace of my choosing. Have 1.1 be
something small, with a short doc on "Here's the one thing you need to
do to migrate an app from 1.0 to 1.1". I'd much rather that, then have
1.1 be a huge release, with 5 things I have to fix in my app right
away to be able to use it. Then at least for the people that would
prefer something like that, they can migrate directly from 1.0 to 1.5,
on their own schedule.

Personally, I've just been following merb on github, and merging it in
occasionally.

Just my two cents.
Paul

On Jun 30, 11:13 am, Matt Aimonetti <mattaimone...@gmail.com> wrote:
> 1.0.12 got pushed:http://yehudakatz.com/2009/06/30/merb-vulnerability-fix-1-0-12/ and we are
> working on 1.0.13 with some bug fixes I mentioned earlier.
> Regarding the router, the best thing to do is to ask Carl. But as we
> explained we are anyway waiting for the Rails router to be in place so we
> can do an easy migration for Rails3.
>
> - Matt
>

[Matt Aimonetti]

I agree Paul, however that can't happen until Rails3 development stabilizes. We need a point to migrate to.
We also need Yehuda to spend some more time on Merb which I believe he already has scheduled ;)

- Matt

[Yehuda Katz]

Lots of little releases was in fact the plan, but until now, we didn't really have a viable endpoint for the merge. We've finally completed the biggest step (reworking ActionController), and we'll start experimenting with how that can fit into a merge pretty soon.

-- Yehuda

On Tue, Jun 30, 2009 at 11:17 AM, Paul <psada...@gmail.com> wrote:

[Michael Bensoussan]

I can wait for the new router,

btw .. thx guys for all your work this framework really kicks ass !

Mike

[Scott Motte]

That's exciting to hear about ActionController. Looks like things were just around the corner. Thanks again for your and others' hard work.

[Pavel Kunc]

Thanks Matt,

I'm for small steps as well and the current most pain is 1.9.1 and
bundling. I've apps ready to switch for 1.9.1 and running on the edge
somehow. I'll appreciate any release which brings us closer to the 1.9
and fixes bugs.

I've also question about activeorm. I'd like to upgrade merb_sequel to
work with it, since it seems that merb_helpers now depends on
activeorm. The datamapper adapter is now ported to the activeorm?

Thanks!

Pavel

On Jun 30, 6:13 pm, Matt Aimonetti <mattaimone...@gmail.com> wrote:
> 1.0.12 got pushed:http://yehudakatz.com/2009/06/30/merb-vulnerability-fix-1-0-12/ and we are
> working on 1.0.13 with some bug fixes I mentioned earlier.
> Regarding the router, the best thing to do is to ask Carl. But as we
> explained we are anyway waiting for the Rails router to be in place so we
> can do an easy migration for Rails3.
>
> - Matt
>

[Matt Aimonetti]

There isn't much needed to have an adapter ported to activeorm, however Yehuda just told me yesterday that he's planning to remove the registry process and slightly change the API to simplify things. I'll let him comment on that.

Regarding 1.9 action-args still isn't fully 1.9 compatible, but everything else is or should be.

- Matt

[Yehuda Katz]

The reason we never released ActionORM is that we were still discussing it internally. It looks like the final conclusion is to have models respond_to? to_active_model, which will return self in the case of AR and DM, and a proxy object in the case of incompatible models. This means that no library actually needs to be part of Rails or Merb itself, but a library might be used by ORMs to help build the proxy object (optionally).

I like this approach a lot better because it lets the ORMs and ORM plugins handle returning the right kind of object, and duck-typing is a more rubyish solution as well.

-- Yehuda

[ojak]

Matt,

You mentioned that Merb 1.1 has been ready for several weeks, but
there are still over 70 tickets in Lighthouse for it, some of which
are pretty critical. If 1.1 is in fact ready to go, would it be
possible for someone with access to clean up the Lighthouse tickets so
we can better understand the progress? I think that would greatly
help.

Thanks!