# Merb-0.4.0 **URL:** \ **Category:** Ruby\ **Created:** [November 9, 2007, 1:13am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/merb-0-4-0/119667 "2007-11-09T01:13:53Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![ezra\_z](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/e/f07891/32.png) [@ezra\_z](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/ezra_z)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2007, 1:13am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/merb-0-4-0/119667/1 "2007-11-09T01:13:53Z")
Hello Friends- Just a quick note to announce the release of Merb-0.4.0. this is a significant release for the project and has way too many features and changes to list here. You can read about the new changes here on my blog: [http://brainspl.at/articles/2007/11/07/merb-0-4-0-released-with-new-site-merbivore-com](http://brainspl.at/articles/2007/11/07/merb-0-4-0-released-with-new-site-merbivore-com) And we have launched a new website as well: [http://merbivore.org](http://merbivore.org) our trac instance is here: [http://merb.devjavu.com](http://merb.devjavu.com) IRC channel on [irc.freenode.net](http://irc.freenode.net): #merb Merb is an ORM agnostic web framework. Its the VC layer of MVC. There is official plugin support for using ActiveRecord, DataMapper or Sequel as your ORM or you can use merb with no ORM if you want to use a file store or CouchDB or something like that. Merb is written with the motto of less magick in the code and clean modular entry points to extend the framework for your own purposes. Plugins are just rubygems so they support versioning and dependencies. We’ve taken a lot of the good things we like from rails and left behind a lot of the cruft and baggage we didn’t need or want. This means merb is lean and mean and the code is easy to grok. Cheers- - Ezra Z. & The Merb Team ---
**Author:** ![ezra\_z](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/e/f07891/32.png) [@ezra\_z](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/ezra_z)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2007, 5:38pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/merb-0-4-0/119667/2 "2007-11-09T17:38:08Z")
Ezra Z. wrote: > Plugins are just rubygems so they support versioning and dependencies. > We’ve taken a lot of the good things we like from rails and left > behind a lot of the cruft and baggage we didn’t need or want. This > means merb is lean and mean and the code is easy to grok. > > Cheers- > > - Ezra Z. & The Merb Team > What is the best approach for converting a web app that is using Mongrel > to one that utilizes Merb? Do I rebuild everything from scratch, or is there an example of converting an application to Merb that would wrap an existing mongrel/rails app in the Merb framework? If I rebuild, is there an order I should follow when merging the models, controllers, and views that I already have with the ones created by Merb. Thanks in advance for your informed advice. – Steve D. ---
**Author:** ![ezra\_z](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/e/f07891/32.png) [@ezra\_z](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/ezra_z)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2007, 12:12am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/merb-0-4-0/119667/3 "2007-11-10T00:12:39Z")
does merbe run ‘super well’ on 1.9? 🙂 Like nicely fast? ---
**Author:** ![ezra\_z](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/e/f07891/32.png) [@ezra\_z](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/ezra_z)\ **Post date:** [November 14, 2007, 2:57am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/merb-0-4-0/119667/4 "2007-11-14T02:57:01Z")
Roger P. wrote: > does merbe run ‘super well’ on 1.9? 🙂 Like nicely fast? Do you think you could come up with a page showing how Merb is different from Rails? IMHO every non-rails framework should do that. The large community makes Rails the default framework; why use Merb if it’s the same as Rails but with less people improving and testing it? So the deciding factor on choosing Merb over Rails would have to be 1. what can Merb do that Rails doesn’t? 2. what does Merb do differently? Daniel ---
**Author:** ![ezra\_z](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/e/f07891/32.png) [@ezra\_z](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/ezra_z)\ **Post date:** [November 14, 2007, 7:44am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/merb-0-4-0/119667/5 "2007-11-14T07:44:05Z")
On Nov 13, 2007, at 5:56 PM, Daniel DeLorme wrote: > 1. what does Merb do differently? > > Daniel Merb borrows quite a bit of conventions from rails but also has it’s own interesting features. One of the main goals of the project is to have a small, tight easily extensible core that is fast and has clean explicit entry points for plugins and customizations. It’s a lot more modular than rails is as far officially supporting 3 different ORM backends, activerecord, sequel and datamapper, supporting test/unit or rspec for testing. Merb does not use the stdlib cgi.rb, it implements all its own multipart parsing and is much faster at it. In fact merb is much faster then rails in general: [http://pastie.caboo.se/private/dbwggdztupcpbt6v3rdpga](http://pastie.caboo.se/private/dbwggdztupcpbt6v3rdpga) Hhere is a pdf called Why Merb? It covers a lot of the points where merb is different from rails. [http://yehudakatz.com/wp-content/uploads/WhyMerb.pdf](http://yehudakatz.com/wp-content/uploads/WhyMerb.pdf) Cheers- -Ezra ---
**Author:** ![ezra\_z](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/e/f07891/32.png) [@ezra\_z](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/ezra_z)\ **Post date:** [November 14, 2007, 9:12pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/merb-0-4-0/119667/6 "2007-11-14T21:12:27Z")
On Nov 14, 2007, at 2:14 AM, Jeremy K. wrote: > rails [http://svn.devjavu.com/merb/apps/rails\_benchmark/](http://svn.devjavu.com/merb/apps/rails_benchmark/) > > It’d be cool to see camping, iowa, wee, nitro, etc versions as well, > though perhaps of jruby’s petstore app instead. > > Best, > jeremy Yeah it is a micro benchmark but will include more and more features as time progresses. We will probably port the petstore app people are using for benchmarks and run with that. I also have to say that edge rails has some major performance improvements over the older gems so kudos to rails core for that. If rails didn’t have to support so much baggage in the form of backwards compatibility then they could be just as fast imho. I though that rails 2.0 would be the chance to break some backwards compat in the name of faster and leaner framework but alas the ship has sailed on that one. Maybe rails 3.0 can actually make some dramatic changes? I’d be happy to contribute anything I’ve learned in merb back to rails if you feel like re-architecting ActionPack. Cheers- -Ezra ---
**Author:** ![ezra\_z](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/e/f07891/32.png) [@ezra\_z](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/ezra_z)\ **Post date:** [November 14, 2007, 11:15am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/merb-0-4-0/119667/7 "2007-11-14T11:15:57Z")
On 11/13/07, Ezra Z. [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote: > In fact merb is much faster then rails in general: > > [Parked at Loopia](http://pastie.caboo.se/private/dbwggdztupcpbt6v3rdpga) This is a microbenchmark of partial render speed, not a general look at application performance. Check out the apps at merb [http://svn.devjavu.com/merb/apps/benchmark/](http://svn.devjavu.com/merb/apps/benchmark/) rails [http://svn.devjavu.com/merb/apps/rails\_benchmark/](http://svn.devjavu.com/merb/apps/rails_benchmark/) It’d be cool to see camping, iowa, wee, nitro, etc versions as well, though perhaps of jruby’s petstore app instead. Best, jeremy