
Rails and Merb Merge - jarnold
http://yehudakatz.com/2008/12/23/rails-and-merb-merge/
======
Locke
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?

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

~~~
carbon8
Well, there _are_ already over 400 Rails forks on github. ;-)

~~~
tlrobinson
Yes, but someone needs to step up and build a community for it to be a viable
fork.

There's a difference between someone forking Rails on GitHub so they can say
"look at me, I maintain my own fork of Rails" (like 99% of those Rails
"forks") and a legitimate open source project.

------
jarnold
More links:

[http://weblog.rubyonrails.org/2008/12/23/merb-gets-merged-
in...](http://weblog.rubyonrails.org/2008/12/23/merb-gets-merged-into-rails-3)

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

<http://rubyonrails.org/merb>

<http://merbist.com/2008/12/23/rails-and-merb-merge/>

<http://brainspl.at/articles/2008/12/23/merb-is-rails>

[http://loriholden.com/archives/2008/12/23/16-merb-is-
rails-3...](http://loriholden.com/archives/2008/12/23/16-merb-is-rails-30)

[http://mornini.wordpress.com/2008/12/23/rails-2x-merb-1x-rai...](http://mornini.wordpress.com/2008/12/23/rails-2x-merb-1x-rails-30/)

[http://splendificent.com/2008/12/the-merb-rails-merger-
annou...](http://splendificent.com/2008/12/the-merb-rails-merger-announcement-
an-inside-opinion/)

------
jon_dahl
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.

~~~
jm4
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.

~~~
carbon8
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.

~~~
jm4
This is informative. I had never heard of Rack before. It seems very similar
to Python Paste. Neat.

However, I don't see what this has to do with my original comment. It doesn't
address any of the concerns I raised about the john_dahl's comment.
Specifically, I'm wondering how several competing web frameworks results in
splintering of the Ruby community. Isn't competition good? Don't we want a
variety of tools that meet different needs?

I frequently see Merb mentioned as an alternative to Rails in response to some
gripe about Rails. Developers obviously have needs that aren't met by Rails.
So my question is how is this merger a positive thing for developers? What's
wrong with having several tools that are used for different scenarios? Of
course, 100 competing web frameworks that are essentially all the same doesn't
do anyone any good, but surely there's nothing wrong with several if they
specialize in different areas.

john_dahl's comment essentially applauds the merger as a unification of the
Ruby community and implies that it's a disadvantage to have competition. Is
that really a good thing? Developers don't benefit one iota from having a
"winner".

~~~
mileszs
I agree that competition is good. There is (was) concern that loud, shallow,
infantile arguments of Merb versus Rails were damaging, to an extent. If
nothing else, they were really, really annoying, and too frequent. This may be
the "splintering" of which john_dahl was speaking.

There are other frameworks, although they get little "press", as they lack an
Engine Yard or 37signals hype-machine. In fact, if you visit ramaze.net (one
of the more mature frameworks) and scroll down, you can find a listing of all
the frameworks of which the ramaze people are aware. Twenty-one, including
Merb AND Rails, at last count. (It is likely that not all of them are wholly
distinguishable from one another. I can't say, as I haven't tried them.)

------
mdemare
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!

~~~
cosmo7
Can people stop coming up with examples? You're ruining mdemare's argument.

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

------
undertoad
Rails: Merb, _I_ am your father.

Merb: Nooooooooooo!

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KevBurnsJr
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.

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

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jackowayed
So, I posted this on one of the threads for other blog posts about this, but
that tread doesn't have much going on, and I want to see what people have to
say about it:

I'm a merbist and think this will be good for both the Merb and Rails
communities.

That said, I'm a little afraid it will shaft the other Ruby frameworks
(Sinatra, Camping) and possibly straight ruby too. People might make
interesting things only compatible with Rails.

When Merb was a pretty big, active minority, it was more compelling to go out
of one's way to make interesting libraries (ORMs, gems, etc.) easily
compatible with anything ruby.

Now, people might at the least write things specifically setup for use w/
rails in such a way that it's inconvenient to nonrails ruby, and at worst make
Rails plugins for things that could be useful libraries for all of Ruby.

Rails is gaining modularity, but I fear Ruby overall might lose it. Even after
Rails and Merb merge, rails!=ruby.

~~~
mileszs
There are plenty of people in the Ruby community who avoid Rails (whether
their reasons are valid or not). I think you'll find plenty of Rubyists who
wish to create things outside of Rails. Whether that means they will be
throwing weight behind another framework such as Ramaze, or creating a new
one, I can't say. I do believe that there are enough anti-mainstream hackers
in the mix now that you don't have to worry about that "scene" dying.

You're one of them, to an extent, and there's nothing wrong with that. Have at
it.

------
allertonm
Do I detect the hand of Benchmark Capital here?

Edit: I wrote the orginal comment in a hurry - but what I was getting at was
that Engine Yard took quite a bit of cash from Benchmark. I somehow doubt that
a move like this could have happened without their approval, and I have to
wonder if they instigated it (and why...)

~~~
ksvs
Hmmm.

<http://www.benchmark.com/news/sv/2008/10_21_2008.php>

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cglee
I love this. I was just torn about learning Merb and worried about how the
Rails community was slowing down. This should inject some much needed energy
as well as introduce some of Merb's awesome features into Rails. Great move.

------
awt
I hope the result ends up being mostly merb. It is just so much cleaner...

------
ruby_roo
Can't wait for Zed to weigh in!

~~~
nailer
Wait no longer. Zed has spoken: <http://www.zedshaw.com/blog/index.html>

------
mpk
This is awesome.

Merb has become the 'go to' framework for Rails developers like myself who are
unsatisfied with several Rails design choices.

However, the technical differences between the two are actually not that big.
A merge of Merb and Rails concepts sounds like a good thing, all 'round.

Three cheers for open-source development and civil relationships between
developers.

------
tlrobinson
My brain _knows_ it's the middle of December, but I had to check to make sure
it wasn't April 1st. This is _exactly_ the type of headline we see every year
on April 1st. Crazy that it's real.

------
tlrobinson
I once heard someone suggest that the "Rails" architecture should just be a
standard that could be implemented for any language. This seems to be a step
in that direction. Sounds pretty good to me.

------
thomasmallen
If you can't beat 'em...

------
mikhailov
DHH confirmed to going with current logo. Are that guy delirious?
<http://url.davegrey.com?06609>

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

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

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juliend2
this is huge. and it turns out that yesterday i was considering learning merb
instead of rails. but for the moment i will learn rails. what is the best one
to learn at the moment in order to be ready for rails 3?

~~~
mileszs
Both. They're both Ruby. The learning curve for one over the other changes
very little ultimately.

In practice, however, Merb docs, tutorials, articles, howtos, et cetera, are
lacking. That is reality. If you're starting from scratch w/ Ruby and her
frameworks, you'll probably find Rails more newbie-friendly from a learning-
materials standpoint.

~~~
juliend2
Interesting, Thanks!

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bprater
Wow, completely unexpected! Very exciting!

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mikhailov
It's really great! <http://www.railsgeek.com>

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jhancock
so much for "no code is faster than no code"

