# Merb as a Milestone, rather than Rails for IronRuby 1.0 **URL:** \ **Category:** IronRuby\ **Created:** [March 10, 2008, 5:39am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/merb-as-a-milestone-rather-than-rails-for-ironruby-1-0/131444 "2008-03-10T05:39:39Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![rahil](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/r/ebca7d/32.png) [@rahil](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/rahil)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2008, 5:39am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/merb-as-a-milestone-rather-than-rails-for-ironruby-1-0/131444/1 "2008-03-10T05:39:39Z")
Hi, Its no secret that IronRuby shall Run Rails to prove a total implementation for declaring IronRuby 1.0 Its a great going by IronRuby team, and i can see work progressing in this direction. But things have changed a lot recently… " Merb" a new framework for Ruby, has taken a right step in the direction of creating a perfect MVC, with Rails as an inspiration, but removing few drawbacks of Rails as well. It has added many outstanding features, which are worth considering. Merb can now work with any 3 of ORM’s ( Active Record, DataMapper and Sequel) rather than Active Record as an only ORM offered by Rails. Now…On the other hand DataMapper is also considered a strong competitor to Active Record as it has added few advantages over Active Record So… Merb, rather than limiting itself to one ORM is offering much more than Rails. I think… IronRuby team should consider this option too, and change their milestone from Rails to Merb, after seeking many suggestions on this forum. PLUS… LINQ to SQL also cannot be neglected at this stage, and it should be considered as well, not forgetting SubSonic. So its possible that IronRuby can easily support atleast 5 ORM’s at this stage, in their first version. This are just my views, correct me if i am wrong. Cheers ---
**Author:** ![rahil](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/r/ebca7d/32.png) [@rahil](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/rahil)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2008, 6:11am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/merb-as-a-milestone-rather-than-rails-for-ironruby-1-0/131444/2 "2008-03-10T06:11:39Z")
Rahil, Although getting Rails compatability is a nice test case, I would say that complete Ruby coverage would be a better goal for 1.0, because that would theorectically mean that Rails or Merb or whatever would be able to be run. One of the problems of targetting Merb at this point would be the fact that it is a moving target - it’s API is changing on an almost daily basis, as well as the fact that is relies heavily on Mongrel. I don’t really see a huge andantage in porting Mongrel initially, as IIS would be a logical web server to target - not to say that it couldn’t be done, there is just more important things at the moment. > From the ORM point of view, for ActiveRecord (as well as AKAIF > datamapper/Sequel) the essential part for the IronRuby port would be a > MSQL > driver and/or an ODBC driver/libraries. In fact, all of the database > drivers > will probably need to be ported, (The pure Ruby MySQL driver is dog > slow). * * * Myles E. Mobile: +61-409-293-183 MadPilot Productions URL: [http://www.madpilot.com.au](http://www.madpilot.com.au) Phone: +618-9467-7651 Fax: +618-9467-6289 Try our time tracking system: 88 Miles! > **[88miles.net - This website is for sale! - 88miles...](https://www.88miles.net)** > > This website is for sale! 88miles.net is your first and best source for all of the information you’re looking for. From general topics to more of what you would expect to find here, 88miles.net has it all. We hope you find what you are searching for! ---
**Author:** ![rahil](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/r/ebca7d/32.png) [@rahil](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/rahil)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2008, 5:52am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/merb-as-a-milestone-rather-than-rails-for-ironruby-1-0/131444/3 "2008-03-11T05:52:36Z")
hi, I think Ruby will be the forerunner and I would love Rails to be the market leader as a Web Framework because it’s just fun creating applications using it. But I think there will be a lean towards “light-weight” frameworks like Merb and Waves, because they are cleaning up where Rails left off. There has been a lot of talk about Rails’ downfalls, that it doesn’t scale very well, and these new frameworks are selling on the fact that they do it better than Rails. Rather than setting a milestone for a particular framework… I think a total 100% ruby implementation on .net is a MUST at this stage. With the FULL implementation, we have the opportunity to extend and create MERB, WAVES or anything sort of that with IronRuby. Just my 2 cents SoftMind ---
**Author:** ![rahil](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/r/ebca7d/32.png) [@rahil](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/rahil)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2008, 7:28am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/merb-as-a-milestone-rather-than-rails-for-ironruby-1-0/131444/4 "2008-03-11T07:28:39Z")
There seems to be a lot of confusion about the goals for IronRuby on this list. To be clear, I want to make sure that folks understand our priorities. 1. Our primary goal is to run real Ruby programs. Rails is a real Ruby program. Merb is a real Ruby program. Real is defined as programs that run _today_, not speculative future scenarios. Real programs will run as long as they do not have dependencies on features that do not exist in Windows. Pure Ruby programs that meet these requirement should just work on IronRuby. Corner cases will be dealt with on a case by case basis. 2. Our next goal is excellent .NET Interop. This includes invoking methods, and responding to events sourced by existing .NET libraries. This also includes work to enable hosting so that arbitrary .NET applications can host IronRuby. We will also work on scenarios like data binding to ensure that it is natural to program against WinForms / WPF / Silverlight. In cases like [ASP.NET](http://ASP.NET)[MVC] this means that they ([ASP.NET](http://ASP.NET) teams) will have to do some work to make things happen. We haven’t done any significant work in this latter area. Note that this is a priority list. Given limited resources 1) trumps 2). Thanks, -John ---
**Author:** ![rahil](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/r/ebca7d/32.png) [@rahil](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/rahil)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2008, 9:58am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/merb-as-a-milestone-rather-than-rails-for-ironruby-1-0/131444/5 "2008-03-11T09:58:26Z")
Softmind T.: > Can you kindly give a rough estimate deadline for this. I think you answered your own question: > It is understood that it will be out in the second half of 2008. > > But Second half means between June to December 2008. - John ---
**Author:** ![rahil](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/r/ebca7d/32.png) [@rahil](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/rahil)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2008, 8:24am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/merb-as-a-milestone-rather-than-rails-for-ironruby-1-0/131444/6 "2008-03-11T08:24:54Z")
Dear John, There is also a little confusion about the Final version of IronRuby. I mean IronRuby 1.0 RTM It is understood that it will be out in the second half of 2008. But Second half means between June to December 2008. Can you kindly give a rough estimate deadline for this.