Merb 1.0 RC2
As I’m writing this post, Merb 1.0 RC2 (v0.9.10) is being propagated through all the RubyForge mirrors.
$ sudo gem install merb will install/update Merb Stack. Merb stack is a meta-gem/package installing all the gems you need to get started (including merb-core, merb-more, datamapper and sqlite3 driver)
The main focus for this release was to fix bugs and make the stack Windows compatible. We didn’t get any major bugs in RC1 but fixed a lot of small annoyances and problems with generated resources. We also made sure Merb itself would work properly with Windows (not using incompatible signals etc..) and we spent some time getting the Data Object sqlite3 drivers compiled on Windows.
You don’t need to use DataMapper with Merb, ActiveRecord works fine. However since we are packaging DM with the Merb Stack, we wanted to make sure Windows people would be able to get started easily.
A quick note, for Windows users, like for Rails, you need to have sqlite3 installed. Simply dump the sqlite3 dll in your system32 folder or your ruby bin folder to get started.
Unfortunately DataMapper isn’t running on JRuby yet. We hope to be able to use the DM guys to get their drivers ported over before 1.0 final but can’t promise anything yet.
What’s next?
Merb 1.0 final by the end of the Month if everything goes as scheduled.
Thanks
A big thank to all the contributors who added valuable information to Merb wiki. Jack Dempsey also wrote a nice blog post about creating your own stack, you might want to check it out if you are not into DataMapper or want something different.
Finally, Merb got a lot of press coverage lately:
and many much more. Follow @merbivore to get daily news.
To finish this post, here is a video of Ezra Zygmuntowicz who recently presented Merb at Google.
17 Responses
You still love me. That’s sweet.
But, I’ve fallen for cygwin.
Posted on October 21st, 2008 at 9:45 pm
[...] The Merbist: Merb 1.0 RC2 (see also the Blogroll for good merb-related links) (tags: ruby merb web programming blog) [...]
Posted on October 21st, 2008 at 11:03 pm
Great news. Thanks for all your work on Merb. I really like what I’ve seen so far from Merb. Yesterday I also found that at least two books will be published on Merb. That’s great news.
Posted on October 21st, 2008 at 11:13 pm
[...] By the way: Merb 1.0 RC2 has just been published. [...]
Posted on October 21st, 2008 at 11:14 pm
I’d be interested in hearing about some of the challenges specifically with getting Merb to work well with Windows. At work I’m stuck with developing on a Windows machine and have had interesting problems getting some Ruby code to work with it (e.g. Thor was a pain some time ago). It’d be nice to learn from other people’s experiences.
Posted on October 22nd, 2008 at 5:42 am
@james The main problem with Windows is that you need to compile every native gem for Windows. The other issue is that the one click installer of Ruby for Windows requires you compile the gems using Visual C++ 6
Finally the other issue is that most Ruby developers are on a POSIX system and don’t always check that some of the low level commands used aren’t compatible with Windows. (some signals, calling env or other stuff like that)
Posted on October 22nd, 2008 at 11:43 am
Great presentation. Was really eye opening about what was going on with Merb, identifying the core differences between it and Rails, and what the philosophical goals of the team were. Our team is generally focused on Rails because of its swiss army knife like appeal, but are finally having the opportunity and and possible real desire to start looking for a “scalpel” to refine and laser focus the efficiency of many of the services we’re building. Merb may be that scalpel in some instances.
Posted on October 23rd, 2008 at 3:58 am
[...] release candidate 2 for it’s upcoming 1.0 release (due within weeks now). No major changes and The Merbist blog lists mainly a focus on bug fixes and Windows [...]
Posted on October 24th, 2008 at 4:43 am
Good news, not so good results.
After cloning, tried to run own specs of merb-core and they use fork() …
How I’m supposed to dig and catch the other issues around Merb and cross platform if cannot run the own specs?
@matt: Work to phase out Visual C build is under works, but need more attention
Been working on make Thor works on Windows, let’s see if that gets merged.
Posted on October 24th, 2008 at 7:08 am
[...] found1 that latest releases of Hoe#, ParseTree#, RubyInline# and even RC2 of Merb depend on a updated version of Rake. The problem is that version 0.8.3 is buggy on Windows from [...]
Posted on October 24th, 2008 at 4:02 pm
[...] candidate 2 for it’s upcoming 1.0 release (due within weeks now). No major changes and The Merbist blog lists mainly a focus on bug fixes and Windows [...]
Posted on October 25th, 2008 at 1:45 am
[...] Merb 1.0 RC1’s bugs were caught, RC2 is now out: The main focus for this release was to fix bugs and make the stack Windows compatible. We didn’t [...]
Posted on October 27th, 2008 at 8:43 pm
WIndoze users, refer to this thread (specifically the do_sqlite3 gem) if you have trouble with the following msg:
checking for sqlite3.h… no
*** extconf.rb failed ***
http://groups.google.com/group/merb/browse_thread/thread/88a8bd139090f32b#
Posted on October 28th, 2008 at 10:36 pm
It appears that you are working on RC3 at the moment, as doing gem install merb tries to install 0.9.11. This is currently failing, as merb-more requires merb-auth-core 0.9.11, but merb-auth-core is stuck at 0.9.10. I hope this is going to be rectified shortly. I like merb and appreciate all of your work on it, and I look forward to being able to gem update merb and have it work again.
Posted on October 29th, 2008 at 5:01 pm
@TiM we are going to re release the do_drivers with the help of a real windows/ruby expert
@Ian yeah we are working on deploying all the merb gems, merb-auth should be available soon. Thanks for the heads up.
Posted on October 29th, 2008 at 5:53 pm
[...] The Merbist » Blog Archive » Merb 1.0 RC2 [...]
Posted on November 2nd, 2008 at 9:07 am
To install the database driver that allows DataMapper to connect to sqlite3 (I have this installed), i typed the following on my Windows XP box that uses Ruby 1.8.6 and gem version 1.3.1 -
c:\> gem install do_sqlite3
However, this failed with the following message -
Building native extensions. This could take a while…
ERROR: Error installing do_sqlite3:
ERROR: Failed to build gem native extension.
e:/ruby/bin/ruby.exe extconf.rb install do_sqlite3
checking for sqlite3.h… no
*** extconf.rb failed ***
Could not create Makefile due to some reason, probably lack of
necessary libraries and/or headers. Check the mkmf.log file for more
details. You may need configuration options.
What am I doing wrong?
Posted on November 19th, 2008 at 12:08 am
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