Start new projects in Rails or Merb?

[chris]

With Rails 3 / Merb 2 not too far away, which framework would make the
most sense to start a project in right now, in regards to updates to
move to rails 3? (this is assuming that one chooses to use
activerecord as the orm). I guess this is also a question to which
framework will the next version resemble more.

Thanks.

[Nicholas Orr]

The question you need to ask yourself is:

"Which framework best suits your goals"

Ask that question and remove "rails 3 / merb 2" from the whole situation.

Basically which ever fits right now is the one you should go with.

I still go with merb/sinatra over rails as I like the way merb does things...

Nick

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[chris]

I guess where things are blurry to me is the future of merb, and
whether it will continue on its own path once the merge is complete.
If merb keeps moving along after Rails 3, then I agree with your
statement and the answer is fairly simple. If development on merb
ceases then my question still stands.

BTW: I like merb as well

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

[casret]

You are really only going to get biased answers on this list.  We have done all our new projects in Merb and we are happy.

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[Julian Leviston]

Geez dude that's a bit biased! ;-)

Julian.

[Chris Hoeppner]

I for one will continue to use merb while it is bearable, and this
includes new projects. I have just recently started one.

[MarkMT]

For me, Rails 3 is just too much of an unknown quantity at the moment
to do anything too significant with it yet. At some point soon I'm
hoping to take one project and try to convert it to use the latest
Rails from github just to try and track what's going on and evaluate
whether it's likely to become my platform of choice in the future. But
it's too early for me to jump back to Rails completely at this point.

Actually if anyone does do this (some exploratory testing of the
latest rails from a merb perspective), it would be good to see some
notes here or on a blog somewhere about what they learn.

[Chris]

Agreed, I'd really like to see some user-perspective notes on what's going on with R3.

2009/11/23 MarkMT <mark.t...@ieee.org>

[MilesTogoe]

Here's some unbiased thoughts - at least our thoughts. We got tired of
the increasing complexity and continuous changes in Rails so we looked
for something else - we found Merb, really liked it, especially
DataMapper. But just at the time we were going to switch a big project
to Merb, the Rails 3 merge was announced. Just at this time we
discovered Sinatra here was a really clean, simple framework that also
worked with DataMapper. The only drawback was some fewer features -
testing, helpers, and a bigger user base.

So we had the choice of Rails 3, Merb, Sinatra. We ruled out Merb
because the direction of the core developers were going towards Rails3 -
that doesn't mean the project ceases to exist, but we didn't see a
critical mass of both developers and community staying with it and we
didn't want to use a "out of mainstream" framework. We use the Barnes &
Noble test - how many (or any) books for the software are on the shelf
? Maybe that doesn't matter for you but for a commercial app, you
should worry about where the support or knowledge will be in 3 yrs (if
not longer). Although Rails3 has the big following, we knew it would
be a long while before the whole merge thing would sort out and it would
put us back in the Rails camp where we were looking for something
simpler. That left Sinatra - the framework doesnt' have a huge
community like Rails but it is so lightweight, that it's really all
about Ruby and Ruby does have that big following. So the only question
was - was it fast enough, stable enough, easy enough, and "professional"
enough to use vs Rails - the answer is yes and we are quite happy.

I'm sure other opinions will vary - this is just ours. Hope it helps
you make a decision.

[Coffee Addict]

Thanks for that opinion. I'm also choosing an alternative to Rails,
which I've been using for years, and want something that has a serious
mindshare and longevity.

Could somebody enlighten me as to whether Sinatra allows me to work
elegantly with JSON input and output, the way the Halcyon was
conceived to?

[Ian Sheridan]

I think that you should take some time and try to understand Sinatra a
bit more. The beauty of Sinatra is that there is practically nothing
in your way to do anything that you can do with Ruby. And to answer
your question yes it works with JSON perfectly fine. Just load the
right library and your on your way.


- Ian



----------------------
Ian Sheridan
http://iansheridan.dyndns.org
----------------------

> For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/merb?hl=en.
>
>
>

[gasbeing]

Thanks. Actually, I'm beginning to glimpse the open-ness of the component technologies involved, having looked a bit at Rack today. Having used Rails in an app that receives and sends JSON data, I've been uncomfortable with the rigidness of the framework. For example, I've had to use the "json_request" plugin in order for Rails to be able to process, on the front, application/json content type from the browser app, so that these reach the controller.

Now with Rack, it's very close to the metal and very easy to serialize/deserialize data to JSON. It's easy to construct a "params" data structure that is application-specific, based on the request URL, and so on.

[pedro mg]

Hi,

On Nov 23, 2009, at 11:31 AM, Chris Hoeppner wrote:

> I for one will continue to use merb while it is bearable, and this
> includes new projects. I have just recently started one.
>

++
I for one will continue to use merb. Starting new projects with it too, and maintaing older ones.
Merb, the way it was conceived, is *not* a "best before 2010" product.
Merb is not Rails. Merb is a special hacker framework. Not for the masses.

I seem to see the merge with Rails as a "political" decision, not a technical one.
The merge should be called: "try to fix Rails, the platform for masses" ;)

Lets keep Merb running. It's great!

> chris wrote:
>> With Rails 3 / Merb 2 not too far away, which framework would make the
>> most sense to start a project in right now, in regards to updates to
>> move to rails 3? (this is assuming that one chooses to use
>> activerecord as the orm). I guess this is also a question to which
>> framework will the next version resemble more.
>>
>

pedro mg
http://blog.tquadrado.com

[Chris]

Agreed very much.

2009/12/8 pedro mg <pe...@tquadrado.com>

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[Jeff Pollard]

I'm beginning to wonder if "merge" is the right word for what is happening with Rails?  I've seen Yehuda in a talk a few months ago say that while the "Merb/Rails Merge" started out as exactly that, a merge, it's now looking more like just "the next version of Rails."  To me, that says Rails is adopting some "Merbisms" in to its next version, but Rails will maintain its own identity separate from Merb and we really should think of the two as separate projects each with their own pros and cons.

Thanks,

-J

[dreamcat four]

On Wed, Dec 9, 2009 at 5:09 PM, Jeff Pollard <jeff.p...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I'm beginning to wonder if "merge" is the right word for what is happening
> with Rails?  I've seen Yehuda in a talk a few months ago say that while the
> "Merb/Rails Merge" started out as exactly that, a merge, it's now looking
> more like just "the next version of Rails."  To me, that says Rails is

Haha. I've been hoping that a few others to come out of their shells a
bit. Admittedly though this particular outcome was pretty obvious
right from the start.

> adopting some "Merbisms" in to its next version, but Rails will maintain its
> own identity separate from Merb and we really should think of the two as
> separate projects each with their own pros and cons.
>
> Thanks,
>
> -J

If Yehuda leaves Merb in favor of rails, it still makes good sense to
continue using and maintaining Merb. Absoloutely.


Or think of it this way:
More fun to maintain whilst Merb has a smaller codebase than Rails 3.


Wheras in Rails:
Submit a 1.9 compatibility fix to Lighthouse. Wait about 6 month. It's
still not merged.
Begin cycle again.
:)

Heh i'm not complaining. Honestly the people who merge the stuff to a
great job. Its just the experience what its like to be a contributor
over there.


dreamcat4
drea...@gmail.com

[Martin Gamsjaeger]

Yeah, merb needs spiritual and actual coding support :)

cheers
snusnu

[Martin Gamsjaeger]

So what that means is we greatly appreciate and accept patches and try
to apply them FAST!

[chris]

> "Merb/Rails Merge" started out as exactly that, a merge, it's now looking
> more like just "the next version of Rails."  To me, that says Rails is
> adopting some "Merbisms" in to its next version, but Rails will maintain its
> own identity separate from Merb and we really should think of the two as
> separate projects each with their own pros and cons.

I am all for that, however I am curious to know where Merb has
benefited from the merge. If all rails plugins would work in Merb, and
vice versa, that would be good enough for me.

[Eleo]

I've been having the same dilemma. The thing I like most about Merb
is that it's pretty lightweight and modular compared to Rails. And I
can raise NotFound for 404s. If Rails 3 works in a similar vain I'll
be all over it. Merb is pretty stable and functional and there's not
much more I want out of it. It might be a bit stale, but it still
works. In any case Rails and merb operate in similar ways and porting
an app to Rails 3 shouldn't be laborious.

[Nicholas Orr]

One of the things rails has going for it are all the form helpers with nested models etc.

Though for me, it is a whole lot simpler to do complex forms in extjs 

This is the only bit I see as "missing" in merb from the stand point of new people - but really if you're in merb, you're not afraid of a little extra work. 

(something i thought of)

2009/12/13 Eleo <sir...@gmail.com>

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