Rails and Merb Merge

http://yehudakatz.com/2008/12/23/rails-and-merb-merge/

by jarnold • 18 years ago

155 52 18 years ago

yehudakatz.com

mechanical_fish2• 18 years ago

I'm modding this up because one of these submissions needs to win, so that we know where the conversation should go.

jon_dahl2• 18 years ago

Wow, big news.

I'm mixed on this. One of the strengths of Rails was that it was the dominant Ruby web programming framework. This meant that virtually the entire community was behind Rails when it came to web app development - unlike some other languages, which have several frameworks competing for the crown. But Merb has recently started to give Rails a run for its money. Fortunately, the learning curve between Merb and Rails is relatively small.

So on the one hand, it's great that the Ruby community won't splinter between two competing frameworks.

But on the other hand, Merb was really creative and innovative, and I'd hate to see that innovation slow down as it becomes the Establishment.

mechanical_fish2• 18 years ago

Merb was really creative and innovative, and I'd hate to see that innovation slow down as it becomes the Establishment.

All innovations either become Establishment or remain obscure. I'm perfectly happy to see Merb go Establishment. If it doesn't work out... it's not as if the project won't be forked again.

Innovation won't stop. It will just have a different name and perhaps some different principals.

jon_dahl2• 18 years ago

Innovation won't stop. It will just have a different name and perhaps some different principals.

That's exactly my hope.

KevBurnsJr2• 18 years ago

lol @ Rails being called "the Establishment"

jm44• 18 years ago

How can the Ruby community splinter between two competing web frameworks? The entire Ruby-using population does not need to agree on a web framework. There can be smaller communities around various projects and frameworks within the Ruby community. In fact, I would think that it would be vital to Ruby's advancement and evolution.

You mention that Rails being the dominant web framework is a strength and in the same sentence remark about how with other languages there are multiple competing frameworks. How, exactly, does this negatively impact developers? On the flip side, how does a merger between Rails and Merb positively impact developers? Developers who don't like Rails had an alternative in Merb and vice versa. How is the elimination of a choice a good thing?

The way I see it, competition here is only a good thing. Why would anyone want Rails to be the only option-- or even the de facto standard-- when it's been shown to be exactly the wrong tool for the job in several high profile scenarios? Don't get me wrong-- I'm not bashing Rails. I'm just saying it's a good thing to have a few more tools in the toolbox. When your only tool is a hammer everything starts looking like nails.

chaostheory• 18 years ago

the problem of too much choice: http://www.spring.org.uk/2007/09/barry-schwartz-on-why-too-m...

carbon82• 18 years ago

Well, Rack is really changing a lot already with Ruby frameworks. Sinatra is becoming more popular for highly specialized apps, and now you can embed Sinatra and Camping apps into other Rack apps, which includes Rails edge apps.

Basically what's happening is that everything in Ruby is already becoming more modular, shifting toward organized APIs, so this helps move in a direction where you can basically build a customized framework like legos out of a bunch of gems and specialized apps without spending an inordinate amount of time trying to patch things to work together.

petercooper• 18 years ago

That's alright, we have Sinatra for innovation now: http://sinatra.rubyforge.org/

mdemare• 18 years ago

Impressive! How often do you hear about two open-source projects merging? Forking is much more common. I can't even recollect other instances of merging.

Best of luck to the two teams with making it work!

jm44• 18 years ago

Compiz and Beryl. Beryl forked from Compiz and, if I remember correctly, relations were very sour between the two projects. Several months later they merged into Compiz Fusion.

tlrobinson5• 18 years ago

KHTML and WebKit (though I'm not sure what the status of the "unforking" is): http://arstechnica.com/journals/linux.ars/2007/07/23/the-unf...

dabeeeenster• 18 years ago

WebWork and Struts merged to become Struts 2...

rapind• 18 years ago

This is the best comparison. Struts was great when it came out and inspired a lot of 2nd gen frameworks like Webwork. Webwork was very clever and much improved over struts. However, struts was far more popular. Bringing the two together created a better product that was adopted by the mainstream java web developers. It was a great way to get the developers that were stuck on struts (for whatever reason, most likely to support existing code bases) into a better design.

In about a year I could write the paragraph above substituting rails for struts, merb for webwork, and java for ruby.

davidw• 18 years ago

gcc forked at one point, and was subsequently merged back into the main branch. Still, though, it's not an everyday thing.

cosmo7• 18 years ago

Can people stop coming up with examples? You're ruining mdemare's argument.

rmaccloy• 18 years ago

Well, in the case of GCC/egcs and KHTML/WebKit, it's not quite a precise merge; egcs and WebKit won.

qhoxie• 18 years ago

Hop in #merb and #rubyonrails for commentary from wycats and dhh. Lots of good discussion.

nickb• 18 years ago

Well, this move has cemented Rails' future as the best web framework there is. What an awesome move! Congrats to Merb & Rails teams!

Locke• 18 years ago

Wow, I almost wish it were April Fools Day...

For someone who loves Merb and had decided to leave Rails behind (as much as possible), I have very mixed feelings about this. If this means Rails will start to feel more like Merb, fantastic! Otherwise?

I have a feeling it'll be a long while before I really know how to feel about this...

It'll be interesting to see how well this merger actually works in practice. It seems like when large companies merge the results are often underwhelming. Can a merger of large open source projects work? Will the different cultures clash?

undertoad2• 18 years ago

Ramaze

tlrobinson5• 18 years ago

It's open source... fork it. I'm sure someone will.

carbon82• 18 years ago

Well, there are already over 400 Rails forks on github. ;-)

thomasmallen2• 18 years ago

Merb will continue to be maintained and improved:

"To be perfectly clear: we are not abandoning the Merb project. There are many production applications running on Merb that are relying on both timely bug fixes and a clear path to the future. If you’re using Merb today, continue using Merb. If you’re considering using Merb for a project because it works better for your needs, use Merb. You will not be left in the cold and we’re going to do everything to make sure that your applications don’t get stuck in the past."

What this really means is that Merb will do what they should as an open-source project: Integrating with another. But for Merb's changes to Rails to be effective, they will have to continually improve Merb in isolation. Merb's going nowhere.

gamache• 18 years ago

Yes, it means Rails will feel more like Merb. From the article:

"As you have probably gathered from the above, there aren’t any clear points that the Merb and Rails team disagree on anymore."

Basically, Rails is being reworked to be more modular, to have less tight coupling among components, to have a defined API and test suite, to support other ORMs, etc. These are the reasons Merb came to be, and the merge back into Rails vindicates the Merb team's design decisions.

KevBurnsJr2• 18 years ago

Sounds like they smelled some code duplication and committed to a cross-project refactoring.

Exciting to see some smart people uniting over respect for a common problem.

jarnold• 18 years ago

Rails and Merb Merge

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