Current State of Merb

Ruby
1

Hi all,

I’ve been looking around for details on Merb and what it’s being used
for
etc but I can’t find a great deal. Most of the information is “Merb is”
style instead of a howto.

I’m wondering if it’s because it’s young, or people prefer camping/rails
over it.

From the time line it certainly looks like Ezra is working hard on it.

Any insights/opinions would be great

Cheers
Daniel

2

On 2/9/07, Ezra Z. [email protected] wrote:

Hey Daniel-

    Sorry the docs or tutorials for merb are non existant. Such is life

when things change fast. I am almost done with a 0.2 release and feel
like merb will be api stable and usable enough to finally write some
nice tutorials. I have been playing fast and loose with code and
features while I develop my ideas for merb so things change fast.

I hope my comment did not come across as a critisism. I did not mean
it be. I’m just looking to see how much info there is at the moment.
I’m quite happy to dive in and try it out for myself.

    As to what people are using merb for. There are a number of folks

using merb to serve high traffick image upload/download type sites.
Once of them is handing 250K uploads a day for the last month or so
on one 15Mb merb process! But merb is also being used all on its own
for full app development. It does take a similar path to rails on a
number of things, but diverges and uses as little magick as possible.
Kinda like a magick removal branch of ActionPack with thread safety
and performance as a primary concern.

I’m looking for a framework smaller than rails for a small ammount of
ajaxy stuff, with a few pages, but served fast. I also need to
thumbnail images with most requests so threading is a must. I think
camping might be a little too simple though. Merb looks like the
right fit from what I’ve seen so far.

    If you want to get involved with writing merb apps then the best

thing you could do is try to build a little project, ask me for help
via email or tickets to trac or come to the irc channel #merb on
irc.freenode.net with questions. Then maybe write up a little blog
post or tutorial to help others start using merb.

As soon as I get a chance I will try to do this.

    I'm into merb for the long haul and I plan on it staying highly

focused light to medium sized core framework that gets out of your
way and lets you code in more of a plain ruby stryle then some of the
railsisms that makes some stuff hard to deal with in the rails source.

    A tutorial site will be up soon with a wiki and docs and tutorials.

Both great to know. I see from the Time line on trac that you are
commiting to it every day. Man you put out a lot of stuff.

Thanx for the information.

Daniel

3

On Feb 8, 2007, at 9:16 PM, Daniel N wrote:

over it.

From the time line it certainly looks like Ezra is working hard on it.

Any insights/opinions would be great

Cheers
Daniel

Hey Daniel-

Sorry the docs or tutorials for merb are non existant. Such is life
when things change fast. I am almost done with a 0.2 release and feel
like merb will be api stable and usable enough to finally write some
nice tutorials. I have been playing fast and loose with code and
features while I develop my ideas for merb so things change fast.

As to what people are using merb for. There are a number of folks
using merb to serve high traffick image upload/download type sites.
Once of them is handing 250K uploads a day for the last month or so
on one 15Mb merb process! But merb is also being used all on its own
for full app development. It does take a similar path to rails on a
number of things, but diverges and uses as little magick as possible.
Kinda like a magick removal branch of ActionPack with thread safety
and performance as a primary concern.

If you want to get involved with writing merb apps then the best
thing you could do is try to build a little project, ask me for help
via email or tickets to trac or come to the irc channel #merb on
irc.freenode.net with questions. Then maybe write up a little blog
post or tutorial to help others start using merb.

I’m into merb for the long haul and I plan on it staying highly
focused light to medium sized core framework that gets out of your
way and lets you code in more of a plain ruby stryle then some of the
railsisms that makes some stuff hard to deal with in the rails source.

A tutorial site will be up soon with a wiki and docs and tutorials.

Thanks-
– Ezra Z.
– Lead Rails Evangelist
– [email protected]
– Engine Y., Serious Rails Hosting
– (866) 518-YARD (9273)

4

On 2/10/07, Chris C. [email protected] wrote:

going, it works great!

If you want to use AJAX I suggest you try out this like:
ajax and camping, together at last « evan weaver

–
Chris C.
concentrationstudios.com
brynmawrcs.com

Thanx for the heads up Chris.

I’m really new at these micro frameworks, just trying to get my head
around them at the moment. It looks really lightweight.

Cheers

5

On 2/9/07, Daniel N [email protected] wrote:

I’m looking for a framework smaller than rails for a small ammount of
ajaxy stuff, with a few pages, but served fast. I also need to
thumbnail images with most requests so threading is a must. I think
camping might be a little too simple though. Merb looks like the
right fit from what I’ve seen so far.

I just want to point out that Camping is almost never too simple. I
have had huge apps written in camping. It is hard to get used to at
first, how to structure controllers and stuff, but once you get it
going, it works great!

If you want to use AJAX I suggest you try out this like:

6

On 2/9/07, Daniel N [email protected] wrote:

first, how to structure controllers and stuff, but once you get it

I have a question on Camping Chris. Can I use MySQL or only sqlite?

You Can use MySQL with a postamble.
http://code.whytheluckystiff.net/camping/wiki/PostAmbles Choose the
right one for your server (Probably Mongrel) and replace the setup
stuff for sqlite with the data for MySQL, takes teh same options as a
database.yml file in rails, just in hash form.