Rails-like Quickly tools brings rapid development to Ubuntu

http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2009/08/quickly-new-rails-like-rapid-development-tools-for-ubuntu.ars

by Davertron • 17 years ago

59 22 17 years ago

Randai• 17 years ago

This actually sounds really neat. I mean some people mind find it not to their taste and all of that, but I think its a step in the right direction for development on Linux(Ubuntu in this case) if similar projects pop up. Are there many similar projects that aim at a quick deployment scenarios?

Tichy2• 17 years ago

While it works well enough for Rails and maybe now also Ubuntu, in general I am wary of generators. Seems to me if there is a need for a generator, it could be a sign that the framework is unnecessarily complex. Since the required configurations and whatnot can apparently be generated automatically, why expose them to the user at all?

FooBarWidget4• 17 years ago

If it generates a lot of code, then yes. But it may also just generate 2-3 lines of boilerplate code that's very annoying to keep typing over and over.

theBobMcCormick• 17 years ago

I don't know about Quickly or Glade, but Rails doesn't really use generators in the way you're thinking of. What Rails calls generators are more like the new project wizards or new class wizards,etc. most IDE's like Eclipse, etc. They create a couple of files with the skeletal outline of the required structure, etc.

It's not like some of the "enterprise" java tools that generate thousands of lines of incomprehensible code.

jsonscripter3• 17 years ago

There's Glade which allows you to create your interface and callbacks to be saved in a file. Using the library GladeXML, you can essentially generate all the required code at runtime without all the maintainability woes of actual code being written to disk.

Edit: link: http://glade.gnome.org/

cschwarm• 17 years ago

I'm not sure if that answers your question but you may like to look at these desktop MVC frameworks for Python:

(1) http://dabodev.com/ - MIT license, using wxWidgets

(2) http://www.async.com.br/projects/kiwi/index.html - LGPL, pyGTK

(3) http://sourceforge.net/apps/trac/pygtkmvc/wiki - LGPL, pyGTK

FooBarWidget4• 17 years ago

Finally, it's about time. I've been working with Rails for several years now and it's an absolute joy to use. It made me wonder whether it's possible to make something similar for desktop apps.

It's good that this is built in Python. I used to use C to write desktop apps, but developing in C is very, very slow. Using Python not only allows quick development, but it also allows you make "binary" packages that run on all Linux variants irregardless of ABI differences.

However, Quickly is doing something wrong compared to Rails: marketing and polish. The Quickly website is just a Launchpad page, and their documentation is just a wiki. They should have a proper website with documentation in an easy-to-read format that doesn't feel messy, maybe a few screencasts too. The current "website" looks to amateurish and doesn't exactly invite me to use it.

fhars2• 17 years ago

And they should be searchable on the web. Somehow I can't stop thinking that this announcement is a misguided followup to the "Think twice before naming your new programming language" article posted a few day ago http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=779108

natrius2• 17 years ago

Even with namespace collisions, it's usually easy enough to find software if you search for "$NAME project". The first result for "quickly project" is related to quickly, though inadvertently. In a week or two, the Launchpad page will probably be the first result.

petercooper• 17 years ago

If you did want to use Ruby, however, a new project called Bowline offers something similar: http://leadthinking.com/191-bowline-a-ruby-gui-framework

timwiseman• 17 years ago

All good points, but the article points out that this is in early development stages. Most likely it will receive that much needed polish in short order with Canonical's resources behind it.

(Edited to correct an amiguous phrase.)

pchickey• 17 years ago

Is the description 'Rails-like' used accurately here? Based on this article, it sounds like Quickly generates boilerplate code and a makefile. Rails is playing on a much higher level, allowing you to describe how the actual interface and data behaves.

sorbits• 17 years ago

It is rather misleading IMO even though it is from the article.

It is a template expansion system that also setups SCM for the “expanded” project templates — presently it sounds like there is only the template for Ubuntu projects, but that other templates could be created.

steveklabnik• 17 years ago

A lot of people think of scaffolding as one of Rails' key features.

Rails-like Quickly tools brings rapid development to Ubuntu

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