Merb gets merged into Rails 3!

Posted by David December 23, 2008 @ 07:47 PM

It’s christmas, baby, and do we have a present for you. We’re ending the bickering between Merb and Rails with a this bombshell: Merb is being merged into Rails 3!

We all realized that working together for a common good would be much more productive than duplicating things on each side of the fence. Merb and Rails already share so much in terms of design and sensibility that joining forces seemed like the obvious way to go. All we needed was to sit down for a chat and hash it out, so we did just that.

What this will mean in practice is that the Merb team is putting their efforts into bringing all of the key Merb ideas into Rails 3. Yehuda Katz will outright join the Rails core team, Matt Aimonetti will work on a new evangelism team, and Carl Lerche and Daniel Neighman (hassox) will be co-starring the effort to bring all this over. We’ve immortalized the merge with plaque page at rubyonrails.org/merb.

What’s being brought over?
Some of the key ideas that they’ll be taking with them from Merb into Rails 3 are:

  • Rails core: Yes, Rails is a full-stack framework and will remain so, but there’s no reason we shouldn’t also make it possible to run with less than the full monty. Rails 3 will make it easy to run just a bare minimum and then allow you to opt in just the stuff you want, if that’s necessary for your particular situation. Think “rails myapp—core” (and “rails myapp—flat”).
  • Performance optimizations: Merb has a lot of Rails pieces rewritten to be faster. We’ll be bringing all that good stuff over. We’ll also bend the architecture in the places where that’s necessary for a big yield. In short, Rails 3 will get all the performance attention that the Merb guys are known for.
  • Framework agnosticism: Rails will always have a default answer to every question within the stack. If you don’t care about testing frameworks, you’ll get test/unit. If you don’t care about which ORM, you’ll get Active Record. But some people do care and want something else. Some people want RSpec for testing, others want to use Sequel or Data Mapper for ORM, others again prefer Haml for templating, and some might prefer jQuery for Ajax. All these people should feel like Rails is welcoming them with open arms. Yes, we’ll have a default, but we shouldn’t have any form of discrimination against alternatives.
  • Rigorous API: Too many plugins break when Rails is updated because it’s not clear where they can safely hook into the internals and when they’re monkeypatching and should expect things to break. The Merb guys committed to a public API with tests to ensure that it wouldn’t break. They’ll bring over that line of thinking and give Rails 3 a tested and documented API for extensions that won’t break willy-nilly with upgrades.

This is not a big bang rewrite
It’s important to understand, however, that this is not a “big bang” rewrite of Rails. We’re far beyond the time when we could just throw out everything and start over. This is going to be a progressive improvement of Rails that’ll carefully judge new initiatives on their impact on backwards compatibility as well as their general utility.

I’m sure there’ll be some parts of Rails 3 that are incompatible, but we’ll try to keep them to a minimum and make it really easy to convert a Rails 2.x application to Rails 3. The Merb guys will also be working hard on giving existing Merb users a manageable upgrade path to Rails 3. We’re working with lots of ideas including allowing existing Merb controllers to be mounted alongside new Rails 3 ones. We’ll see how it all plays out, but play out it will.

Also, the Merb guys aren’t just abandoning the existing Merb user base and their applications. They’ll still be doing bug fixes, security fixes, and work on easing the upgrade path to Rails 3. This will all progress in a nice, orderly fashion.

The timeline
Rails 2.3 is just around the corner. We hope to wrap up and release in January. It’s a blockbuster release packed with goodies to the tilt. But as soon as that’s done, all eyes will be on Rails 3.

The probably-overly-optimistic goal is to have at least a beta version ready for RailsConf 2009 in Las Vegas. Who knows if we’ll make it, but we’ll certainly have made tons of progress on it by then.

So all of these changes are pretty much effective immediately. We’ve already started the collaboration and we’ll be rolling out a bunch of public initiatives announcing the concrete elements of the work under the Rails 3 milestone very shortly.

No hard feelings, just kumbaja
This is quite a dramatic turn of events. We went from testy relations to coming together in not very long at all. But I’ve been incredibly positively surprised at how well everyone on both sides have been gelling behind the scenes. The more we talk, the more we realize that we want the same things. And in the few cases were we do care about something different, it’s usually complimentary.

I really hope that everyone within both communities will deal with this news as gracefully as the key contributors from both camps. Let’s just wipe the slate clean on anything that has gone before and cherish that we can now move forward in unity instead of as fractions of the same ideas.

Rails 3 is going to kick ass.

Also read what Yehuda wrote about this and Carl Lerche and Ezra and Matt.

194 comments

Comments

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  1. Peter Cooper on 23 Dec 19:54:

    Whoa, this is trippy..! I’ve somehow been teleported to April 1st. I’ve missed Christmas! :-(

    Seriously though, wow :)

  2. Matt Darby on 23 Dec 19:54:

    Amazing news!

  3. Derek P. on 23 Dec 19:54:

    Holy shit I have a ruby boner.

  4. Jonathan Nelson on 23 Dec 19:56:

    Oh happy day! This is excellent news for us Rubyists.

    Congrats and thank you to all core members of the Rails and Merb team. Thanks DHH and Thanks Yehuda.

    I’m stoked for 2009

  5. Chris Ledet on 23 Dec 19:56:

    Sweet! This is awesome!

  6. Caleb on 23 Dec 19:57:

    When I first read DHH twitter message I had to check that it wasn’t April 1st. This should be great, and I think a good thing for both camps, and the community in general.

  7. Mirko Froehlich on 23 Dec 19:58:

    Wow, this is very unexpected! I for one thing this is great news.

    I love Rails for its maturity and large developer community, but I’ve also been very excited about Merb and associated technologies (such as DataMapper). Looking forward to using the best of both worlds in Rails 3.

  8. Paul Campbell on 23 Dec 20:00:

    This is really fantastic news. It’s been great to see Rails steer towards performance optimisations lately, and Merb has had quite a steep learning curve.

    It will be hard to bring “the best of both worlds” but the best of both worlds would truly be rocking.

  9. Brennan Dunn on 23 Dec 20:00:

    Awesome!

  10. Rodrigo Kochenburger on 23 Dec 20:01:

    That is a surprise. But a good one, i think.

    Hopefully, many good things will come out of this “join venture”.

    Rails 3 FTW!

  11. Kenneth Kalmer on 23 Dec 20:01:

    Truly remarkable news David! And I sat here thinking what is gonna happen with the community after the flamewar.

    Events like this just shows how the community has matured over the very recent past. Hopefully other competing projects will follow suite as well!

    Here’s to Rails 3!

  12. Josh Susser on 23 Dec 20:02:

    This is seriously awesome news. Cross-pollination, hyrbid vigor, etc. etc. I’m looking forward to a best-of-both worlds scenario!

  13. Yaroslav on 23 Dec 20:02:

    Merry Christmas! A W E S O M E

  14. Bobs on 23 Dec 20:04:

    Whoa. Someone must’ve hacked the RoR blog, Ezra’s and Yehuda’s accounts and posted a prank! :-)

    Thanks Santa…

  15. nap on 23 Dec 20:05:

    Wow. I’m shocked. In a really, really (really!) good way. Very much looking forward to this.

  16. Jerome G-N on 23 Dec 20:05:

    This is truly good news! I have heard a lot of good things about Merb and always wanted to try it!

    Great work, this is a nice example of how it should be handled. For the greater good!

  17. Lonny Eachus on 23 Dec 20:06:

    Really looks like the best of both worlds. Congrats to everyone involved.

  18. Fred Brunel on 23 Dec 20:07:

    This is a fantastic news! Congratulations to you guys!

    You also showed that open source communities can and should work together instead of playing the forking game.

    Focusing the efforts into a common project is a sure way to achieve great things.

    Thank you, for all your hard work.

  19. TheBobs on 23 Dec 20:08:

    Holly crap, you know April fools day is in April , right?

  20. Chris Bloom on 23 Dec 20:10:

    The Merb Merge is great news, but I’m also excited about the plans for a more plug-n-play architecture. Very cool!

  21. Craig P Jolicoeur on 23 Dec 20:11:

    Huge news and good news for both groups.

  22. Caligula on 23 Dec 20:12:

    Didn’t see that one coming…

    Very interesting, in several ways.

  23. Chris McGrath on 23 Dec 20:12:

    Great and v. unexpected news! Congrats guys!

  24. Kevin Evans on 23 Dec 20:17:

    Great news guys, best wishes for the future.

  25. Sven Meyer on 23 Dec 20:18:

    This is GREAT news. If I wouldn’t have been convinced already to go the Ruby way, this would have the final event which show that no resources are wasted for doing things twice, for tying to prove “we can do better than you”, but instead use commensen sense to join and come up with ONE product which is even better than the one before. This is REALLY DRY!!

    Thanks DHH and Thanks Yehuda. !!!

    Merry Xmas !

  26. Charles Ju on 23 Dec 20:20:

    Best Christmas present ever.

  27. Vishnu Gopal on 23 Dec 20:22:

    Pretty awesome!

  28. Justin Reagor on 23 Dec 20:27:

    ALL HAIL THE BORG!!

  29. vlod kalicun on 23 Dec 20:28:

    wow.. i’m gobsmacked! :D

    i’ve been a huge rails fan but have been tempted by the speed and simplicity of merb (from what i’ve read).

    im happy that the two will merge.. it will create a truly great product!

  30. Willy Jaspers on 23 Dec 20:29:

    Yay I don’t have to switch my app over to Merb (because I was seriously thinking about it)

  31. Christian Romney on 23 Dec 20:32:

    Holy Shit. This is a perfect example of why I love the Ruby community.

  32. David Bock on 23 Dec 20:38:

    I love this community! This is fantastic, although I have to admit I’m most partial to the news the JQuery will get some treatment as a first-class citizen in Rails.

  33. Levi Cook on 23 Dec 20:39:

    Sooo…Rails 3 is Merb? :) Thanks for the great news!

  34. sarah on 23 Dec 20:41:

    How Obama-esque of you! Team of Rivals, huh? ;) Sounds very exciting.

  35. Pedro on 23 Dec 20:43:

    Very cool. I’m excited to see how this plays out.

  36. khelll on 23 Dec 20:46:

    That’s what i call it the good work, finally the 2 efforts will merge to give all needed modularity. Thanks

  37. dude! on 23 Dec 20:51:

    !

  38. anjan bacchu on 23 Dec 20:55:

    hi david,

    Congrats!! I'm very glad to know that merb and rails are joining hands. Java could have done a lot more if it weren't that there are way too many frameworks out there.
    The ruby world deserves better and thanks for providing it.

    BR, ~A

  39. ScottD on 23 Dec 20:56:

    Merb and Rails together? How much eggnog have I had?

  40. taelor on 23 Dec 20:57:

    I for one welcome our merged overlords…

  41. Jeremy Ricketts on 23 Dec 20:59:

    Oh man. Just the idea of a javascript-agnostic Rails makes me excited.

  42. leanucci on 23 Dec 20:59:

    OMFG Zed was right! (about almost everything).

  43. paramah on 23 Dec 21:08:

    Great news :)

  44. TJ Stankus on 23 Dec 21:09:

    Like chocolate and peanut butter, baby.

  45. Ryan on 23 Dec 21:09:

    Awesome… like a hot dog.

  46. Justin Spradlin on 23 Dec 21:10:

    So incredible. Great news guys!

  47. Dalibor on 23 Dec 21:11:

    Rails 3 \m/ and fuck X-mas. :)

  48. http://www.railsgeek.com on 23 Dec 21:12:

    It’s really great

  49. daniel lopes on 23 Dec 21:20:

    Fantástico.

  50. Justin Reese on 23 Dec 21:20:

    Rails and Merb teams: A huge kudos on coming together. As someone who has been evaluating both for some large upcoming projects, it is a Godsend to get the Rails maturity and community along with the Merb modularity and performance.

    This is a great day in the Rails and Merb communities.

  51. Mark Holton on 23 Dec 21:25:

    ...Ruby continues to be the best software community… great news about working together. This is going to be great, thanks for the info!

  52. ライアン on 23 Dec 21:29:

    素晴らしい！。。。ホット・ドッグの様に。

  53. Peter Hellberg on 23 Dec 21:38:

    This is just AWESOME!

  54. sigh on 23 Dec 21:40:

    I guess it’s time to switch to Weblocks.

    It’s made with alien technology!

  55. Christian Seiler on 23 Dec 21:41:

    World peace is near

  56. Jim Neath on 23 Dec 21:43:

    This is absolutely crazy.

    In a good way.

    Rails 3.0 FTW.

  57. Andreas Gehret on 23 Dec 21:45:

    AWESOME! Thanks!

  58. dmitry on 23 Dec 21:56:

    крутняк

  59. Mikhailov Anatoly on 23 Dec 21:59:

    This would be help Rails become really competitive with Java an .NET

  60. Pete Hamilton on 23 Dec 22:10:

    “I’m a white male aged between 18 and 35, everyone listens to what I say.” Homer J. Simpson

    Together at last MERB and RAILS!

  61. Bala Paranj on 23 Dec 22:11:

    Ruby on Rails is now Merb on Rails ! Woah, that’s huge!!!

  62. Ash McKenzie on 23 Dec 22:12:

    Wow, I cannot wait!! Best. Christmas. Ever!

  63. Rails Fanboy on 23 Dec 22:13:

    It’s the end of an era. Death to opinionated software!

  64. Elise on 23 Dec 22:18:

    You got your chocolate in my peanut butter!

  65. Edgars Beigarts on 23 Dec 22:27:

    Wow!

  66. Francois on 23 Dec 22:29:

    Wow…Merry Xmas to all of us. This is a very positive move.

  67. Francois on 23 Dec 22:29:

    Wow…Merry Xmas to all of us. This is a very positive move.

  68. The Slake on 23 Dec 22:32:

    Great news

  69. Sandro Paganotti on 23 Dec 22:40:

    Thanks, amazing present !! :D

  70. pmarsh on 23 Dec 22:41:

    @Elise

    Haha my thoughts exactly. Awesome news guys really looking forward to Rails 3!

  71. elliottcable on 23 Dec 22:43:

    This is blasphemy. <,<

    In all of the top listed reasons, it didn’t even list the very top, most important reason I tell every noob I meet to use Merb instead of Rails – the fact that you can learn from Merb.

    Is all of Rails going to be re-written, so that any noob to Ruby can read and learn from it? I learned everything I know about Ruby from simply browsing the merb-core and merb-more sources. They’re written extremely well, extremely cleanly, extremely simply where at all possible – not at all like Rails.

    So, all these great features are coming into Rails with Merb – but what about the one that matters? The fuckin’ philosophy of the core Merb devs? The “code poetry” that makes Merb what it is? Is that coming too?

  72. Thiago Pradi on 23 Dec 22:45:

    Amazing!

  73. Carsten Nielsen on 23 Dec 22:46:

    It’s a Christmas Miracle!

  74. Rob Lambert on 23 Dec 22:50:

    I kept reading, waiting for the punchline… but I guess this is real.

    I was just driving home tonight thinking about how disappointing it was to see the recent Merb/Rails flame wars and really wasn’t expecting this … but great news, I think!

  75. Tom Lee on 23 Dec 22:52:

    Does this include using Ruby Gems for plugins? This was but one thing about Merb that really just made sense.

  76. Owen on 23 Dec 23:03:

    Great news!

  77. Andy on 23 Dec 23:05:

    +1 for Gems plugins. Please – kill the rails plugins!!

  78. Aslak Hellesøy on 23 Dec 23:06:

    Awesome decision. It reminds me of what happened a few years back in Java land when Struts merged with WebWork and became Struts2. Not that these are anywhere near what this marriage will mean.

  79. Josh on 23 Dec 23:23:

    truly amazing! totally kick ass!

  80. dcedilotte on 23 Dec 23:23:

    Congrats to both the Rails dev team and the Merb dev team. Can’t wait to see the changes this brings. :)

  81. Hakan Aksu on 23 Dec 23:27:

    Great News! congratulations to both team. Nice to see “Great Minds Think Alike”. Looking forward to the see and use this opinionated framework going forward with ‘clever’ options.

  82. Marcio on 23 Dec 23:30:

    Really good news!

  83. Marcos Ricardo on 23 Dec 23:34:

    Do it slowly and get stronger !

  84. Duane Johnson on 23 Dec 23:35:

    Thanks to both sides of the aisle! I’m hopeful this will be a win for everyone.

  85. Sam Millar on 23 Dec 23:44:

    Wow, I definitely was not expecting this, sounds like a change for the greater good though so I can’t wait to see some progress!

  86. Jobe on 23 Dec 23:46:

    “And he lead them to the promised land. They drank and ate until their thirst and hunger was quenched. They danced and sang and fashioned false idols of gold. It was only then, when they slept, satiated and exhausted from their long march, that DHH drew his sword and slaughtered the mighty tribe named Merb.”

  87. Sergio Bayona on 23 Dec 23:50:

    what the new name?

    Ruby on Merb? Rails on top of Merb? Merb humps Rails? Merbails? Ramerb? Railserb? Ruberb? ???

  88. Melvin Ram on 24 Dec 00:03:

    Cool beans!

  89. mike on 24 Dec 00:13:

    but the important thing is… what does zed shaw think???

    :D

  90. Stephan Dörner on 24 Dec 00:21:

    The greatest news of the year – just a few days before it ends. ;)

  91. Steve Pete on 24 Dec 00:24:

    @elliottcable I agree. The rails stack built on Merb would seem more sensible.

    That way Merb users still get their modular, slim and well written framework and Rails uses get their giant ball of aliased method chains, monkey patches and squiggle code slapped on top :)

  92. Tekin on 24 Dec 00:30:

    Speechless… Roll on Rails 3/Merb 2!

  93. Anonymouse on 24 Dec 00:33:
    • I WONDER IF THIS HAS ANYTHING TO DO WITH THE RECENT COMPLICATIONS BETWEEN PHUSION & ENGINE-YARD *
  94. Eric Campbell on 24 Dec 00:36:

    Awesome. This is definitely the way to go.

  95. Fredrik W on 24 Dec 00:42:

    This is great news! Thanks for an awesome Christmas present!

    2009 is going to be an exciting year for ruby (jruby, rubinius, rails 3 and other cool projects)

  96. Baloo on 24 Dec 00:44:

    Whoppidoo, jag vill ju va som duuuu (whoppidoobidoba). Jag vill se ut som du, gå som du, duuuuuuuuu, det vill jag nuuuu!

  97. Michael Bannen on 24 Dec 00:46:

    Great move. Just let’s not mess up 2.3, eh? :)

  98. celsius on 24 Dec 01:01:

    but does it scale? (=

  99. Jaime Iniesta on 24 Dec 01:06:

    Hey! This is going to be FUN!

  100. Satish Talim on 24 Dec 01:15:

    Great news for the Ruby community. Thanks and congrats to the Merb and Rails teams.

  101. gonzalez@zenbe.com on 24 Dec 01:15:

    Wow, the most incredible make up sex ever!

  102. liujiuwu@gamil on 24 Dec 01:50:

    Thanks!

  103. Jorge Calás on 24 Dec 02:18:

    This is, by far, the best news this year. The best Xmas present.

    Thanks very much!!

  104. hideto on 24 Dec 02:18:

    迅速插入前1000

  105. Anthony Barone on 24 Dec 02:33:

    Love it. The passion and diversity of this community is what makes it so wonderful.

  106. simonli on 24 Dec 02:34:

    天啊，爆炸性的消息

  107. andy on 24 Dec 02:49:

    really nice present this year. Merry X,mas!

  108. Willem van Bergen on 24 Dec 02:50:

    Good luck to the combined Rails team! I have written a blogpost to commemorate this hostoric event: Using git to merge merb & rails.

    http://techblog.floorplanner.com/2008/12/24/rails-and-merb-merge/

  109. SoftMind on 24 Dec 02:53:

    Very Good News. This will make Ruby community more stronger.

    I am expecting a detailed blog from DHH, clearly explaining what will change and what will remain intact.

    I think, we still have the time to hold on Rails 2.3, those features can be implemented as suggested below..

    Now onwards there should not be any Rails 2.4 etc…It should start with Rails 3.0 alpha 1, alpha 2 etc… till it reaches Beta end. Rather than upgrading each time and break plugins, it would be a nice move as suggested above. “Slices” should be focussed more and More of the Merb should be incorporated.

  110. Jim on 24 Dec 03:26:

    so does this mean that lifo will stop being such a prick about merb?

  111. James on 24 Dec 03:43:

    Congratulations Merb! You just caught a terminal illness – The Rails comminity!

  112. Mysen on 24 Dec 03:45:

    Awesome!!

  113. Jinzhu on 24 Dec 04:27:

    Congrats on the merge!

  114. Robby Russell on 24 Dec 05:17:

    This is great news. I’m optimistic..yet mildly skeptic. I posted my thoughts on my blog.

  115. Igor Petrushenko on 24 Dec 06:04:

    Sounds good.

    Guys ‘merging’ it’s a big job, – I hope you gave real estimates ;)

    However, it’s great to hear that you make such steps. Our community will grown and that’s awesome.

    Thank you, Sincerely, Igor Petrushenko http://www.MyTaskHelper.com

  116. Akhil Bansal on 24 Dec 06:12:

    This is awesome. Long live merb(Rails 3.0) :)

  117. Senthil Nayagam on 24 Dec 06:27:

    Merging merb with rails will help reduce the fragmentation in the ruby community.

    Same should apply for developers of various ruby implementations as well. MRI developers should welcome contributions from REE,rubinious and other ruby implementations.

    One mainstream framework and one mainstream ruby distribution can help consolidate the mindshare and marketshare.

  118. bixiaobo on 24 Dec 06:45:

    代表我自己前来祝贺

  119. Bob Martens on 24 Dec 06:53:

    Congrats to both the Merb and Rails teams on this excellent news. The more we can bring people together, the better things will be.

    I’m giddy with excitement over what this could mean for the greater Ruby community!

  120. Johannes Fahrenkrug on 24 Dec 07:27:

    I’d almost dare to say that on this scale, it can only happen in the Ruby world. Could you image the gazillion Java web frameworks saying: “Hey, actually we want the same thing, let’s join forces”?

    Amazing news, thank you guys so much for your hard work.

  121. Johannes Fahrenkrug on 24 Dec 07:35:

    Ok, Ok, I take that back: I just read Yehuda’s post and obviously this has happened before in the Java world with Struts and Webwork! Kudos to them! But it’s still rare that two such major projects are not too proud to actually join forces.

  122. Abdul-Rahman Advany on 24 Dec 07:59:

    Woow… great! /me is happy… :) DHH: will you also consider using some of the new philosophies in DataMapper (merging might be to much…)

  123. Paco on 24 Dec 08:18:

    So does that mean that the Rails community is finally going to help newcomers as I hear that the Merb commune does or is it business as usual for all the little rails pricks (aka Hansson wannabes)?

  124. Ujjwal Trivedi on 24 Dec 08:24:

    Better performance, more flexibility (flat/core), better interfacing with 3rd parties and plugins. Thats quite a warmth in these chilling winters. I am just concerned about backward compatibility… It’s got to be there.

  125. Matt Aimonetti on 24 Dec 09:09:

    @Ujjwal Trivedi (#124) Rails 3.0 is a major release and we will define an official API. Don’t expect the release to be fully backward compatible. However we will make sure to document very well the new API and how to properly migrate your app. We will also work with major plugin developers to make sure they migrated on time.

  126. Got on 24 Dec 09:30:

    Suppppeerrrrr !!! Awesome!!

    C’est une très bonne nouvelle pour toute la communauté. It’s a great news for the Rails communauty

    Il faut se souder pour mieux avancer. It is necessary to knit together to advance better.

    Bonnes fêtes à tous ;o) Happy Christmas

  127. pulkit on 24 Dec 09:47:

    Will rails 3 affect me bad as i don’t know merb?

  128. gkreimer on 24 Dec 10:08:

    Guys that’s awesome. I thought it’s 1st April this morning when i read about it.

    MINSWAN

    Marry Xmas Guys, I love this present ;)

  129. Matt Aimonetti on 24 Dec 10:21:

    @pulkit no, merb will bring differences in the underlying code and in extra options. You shouldn’t see a huge difference apart from performance and potential options if you want to.

    Of course it’s going to be a major release so you will need to migrate some of your code over.

    -Matt

  130. johan pretorius on 24 Dec 10:23:

    Great news, looking forward to the end result :-)

  131. Mikhailov Anatoly on 24 Dec 10:47:

    What you think about new logo? http://www.railsgeek.com/2008/12/23/rails-3-rails-and-merb-merge

  132. DHH on 24 Dec 10:52:

    Mikhailov, Rails is not getting a new logo and the name for the new version of the framework is going to be “Rails 3”. We have immense brand recognition in the world at large that’s not going to be thrown away.

  133. charly on 24 Dec 10:52:

    Fantastic. It’s like having you’re beloved wife and the brunette you kept staring at in the same bed.

  134. Dan on 24 Dec 13:54:

    What does “packed with goodies to the tilt” mean? Do you mean “to the hilt”?

  135. Hector on 24 Dec 14:07:

    Is it going to be Ruby 1.9 compatible? I guess it would be a good idea because it has some improvements over 1.8.

  136. Alain on 24 Dec 14:14:

    Seems like a great idea! Can’t wait for the release date!

  137. Pablo Lorenzzoni on 24 Dec 14:17:

    Great news! Congratulations.

  138. feggy mango on 24 Dec 14:36:

    Its a benefit to us that you both can put behind your differences and work towards a better solution. Both the Rails and Merb teams should be praised for not getting caught up in all the “versus” nonsense that has been floating around as of late. This is only to going to lead to a framework that is greater than the sum of its parts.

  139. Hubert Łępicki on 24 Dec 15:06:

    Just wondering what’ll happen to all these books that are being written at the moment about Merb. I understand that they’ll still be usable for Merb 1.0, but lots of people won’t buy it, as it’s not very common to learn and use technology that will get abandoned soon.

  140. Kostenlos SMS schreiben on 24 Dec 15:13:

    Congratulations.

  141. ez on 24 Dec 15:18:

    I’d think they would merge the more used framework into the well written framework. Why isn’t Rails going to be merged into Merb 2?

  142. rails_is_not_the_answer@gmail.com on 24 Dec 15:24:

    excellent news! All the fanboys can unite and have an orgy!

  143. Genís Llamas on 24 Dec 15:25:

    Great news… You are the best.

  144. Scott Stewart on 24 Dec 16:50:

    This is amazing news. Congratulations to everyone involved! I’ve had my eye on Merb for the past year, while at the same timing actively building and deploying Rails applications. Fantastic!

  145. Dandre on 24 Dec 18:20:

    Thank you Jesus!

  146. Mean Guy on 24 Dec 18:32:

    Who gives a shit? This is like a glorified circle jerk.

  147. Diego Viola on 24 Dec 18:43:

    Congratulations, now that the merb core is going to be merged into Rails I think Rails will get a lot better.

    I think Merb was about innovation, and I hope they continue with it as a playground so that changes could be merged for further versions of Rails also.

    Or do a Rails branch in order to do playground and add further innovations into Rails itself.

    I hope you get my point, Rails rocks, keep up the great work, and looking forward to use Rails 3! =D

  148. Nellboy on 24 Dec 18:56:

    Let’s hope that they spend some time road-testing the new framework on different Rails programmers with different experience levels… If that’s taken care of, I think this is great news!!!

  149. LacKac on 24 Dec 19:02:

    This is wonderful news. We’ll have an exciting new year.

  150. Ashabul Yeameen on 24 Dec 19:09:

    Happy to see – 1. Future Rails will concentrate on performance improvement 2. Public API for plugin developer. That will eventually reduce code break in plugin in rails upgrade.

  151. pimpmaster on 24 Dec 19:49:

    @ Mean Guy,

    I just circle-jerked a fat load on your smarmy little face. Merry Christmas, ya fucker!

    MEILS FTW!!

  152. @pformoso on 24 Dec 19:55:

    Awesome!!!!!! Waiting for 3

  153. Diego Viola on 24 Dec 20:22:

    The modularity of merb-core is what really got me. I think Rails will shine with this architecture.

  154. john yerhot on 24 Dec 20:56:

    Holy crap. Was not expecting this.

    Anyways, it’s and excellent move for the entire Ruby community in general.

  155. jihad kherfan on 24 Dec 21:45:

    waiting to see ur work in las Vegas ….. please make the Beta !!

  156. Schorsch on 24 Dec 23:14:

    BEST x-mas present EVER !!

    cheers from germany!

  157. BONER KING on 24 Dec 23:45:

    HE SAID RUBY BONER! BONER BONER BONER BONER BONE HER!

  158. Thiago on 25 Dec 00:39:

    Oh My God! o.o

  159. Web Laureate on 25 Dec 00:45:

    omg. so amazing. i guess this is your christmas gift to me. here is my gift to you, your team and merb’s team - enjoy - http://web-poet.com/2008/12/24/fun-and-frolic/

  160. casperjeff on 25 Dec 02:20:

    “Could you image the gazillion Java web frameworks saying: ‘Hey, actually we want the same thing, let’s join forces’? “

    Yes…look at WebWork and Struts 2

  161. richy on 25 Dec 06:02:

    The name of Ruby 1.9 used to be Yarv. Were it that the name of Rails 3 used to be Merb? However, rails and rails team are still rather active and dynamic. Neither Ruby 1.8 nor struts1 remained active when they were merged with the other. What will go on is really interesting and “impossible is nothing”.

  162. Hardy on 25 Dec 07:40:

    GreateNews!!!

    One request, Deprecation should be less so nobody feel headache/stress when they are move from from Rails 2.X to Rails 3.X.

    cheers!!!

  163. v_krishna on 25 Dec 17:23:

    Bad idea!!! Feel free to bring the performance boosts of merb into rails, but otherwise leave merb alone! Sometimes you don’t need a full-stack behemoth of a framework, and would rather build what you want up from pieces. I’d rather have a choice between full-stack and “diy-stack” than be forced to use “full-stack-that-can-be-somewhat-minimized”

  164. Erik Dahlstrand on 25 Dec 17:33:

    Excellent. I’m really looking forward to 3.0!

  165. Rich Apps Consulting on 25 Dec 18:47:

    Great. It means there is a lot more to come in Rails3. Waiting impatiently for the relese.

  166. Neil R. Zamora on 26 Dec 01:28:

    Wow! Love is on the air. After all, the purpose of life is part of to be happy. [Matz] Nice community!

  167. Rahmat on 26 Dec 01:49:

    It’s absolutely exciting news, I was just about get to know about merb and get somewhat interested, now that merb and Ruby on Rails is going to be merged, I really can’t wait to see the result and actually using it… Congratulation for both teams!!! Rails 3 is going to rock the web!!!

  168. Arvind Gupta on 26 Dec 04:09:

    Thats rally cool.

  169. Trishul on 26 Dec 06:25:

    Thank Heavens – I’ll get the time to get up to speed with Rails…I’d love to see the look on Java folks who swear by JSF after Rails 3 is released !!

    BTW, Can we have workflow engine in Rails 3..maybe something similar to jBPM in the Java world?

  170. shadowr on 26 Dec 17:38:

    This is wonderful news, I can’t wait for Rails 3.

  171. Bertu on 26 Dec 18:18:

    Wow, this great news is really the ultimate Christmas present!!! Thank you both – Rails and Merb teams!!!

  172. Billee D. on 27 Dec 16:11:

    Awesome! Honestly, I have been pondering this same scenario for quite some time and I often wondered if it could work.

    There are some great features in both frameworks and I feel that combining them into “Super Rails” will benefit the entire Ruby community.

    Excellent work. I look forward to seeing what comes of this merger. Good luck and thanks for all the fish! ;-)

  173. Mean Guy on 27 Dec 16:37:

    @pimpmaster Oh god! Someone get me a towel, I’ve got ruby cum all over my face!!!

  174. Sander Dieleman on 27 Dec 18:33:

    Awesome!

    I’ve been meaning to try out Merb. DataMapper looks very impressive and using jQuery with Rails has never been very straightforward. However, I’ve never really had the time to sit down and, well, read, so the learning curve held me back. I always resorted to Rails in the end. Hmm, maybe “resorted” isn’t the best choice of words :)

    Looks like I won’t have to now! I’m particularly looking forward to framework agnosticism and the rigorous API :)

  175. X on 27 Dec 18:51:

    This is terrible. Competition breeds innovation.

  176. Paul Klipp on 29 Dec 10:48:

    This is fantastic. We’ve been having a difficult time convincing clients that Merb might be a safe solution for them, but this move will make Merb instantly mainstream.

  177. Rahul on 29 Dec 14:18:

    Now we can get best of both worlds. Ruby is awesome and so is merbs..

  178. Ariel on 29 Dec 17:04:

    DHH,

    Merb has also has “immense brand recognition in the world”, why should that be thrown away?

    I vote for Ruberb! =)

  179. ojak on 29 Dec 20:43:

    So what are developers to do in the interim? Develop on Rails? Develop on Merb?

    I’ve read in many places that there is “a clear path” for the Rails 3/Merb 2, yet I still haven’t seen a single timeline and/or planned transition document that lays out what you can or can’t expect and best practices… you’d think that some sort of master plan document would have been discussed and released with this sort of announcement (or am I missing something)?

  180. Ujjwal Trivedi on 30 Dec 08:33:

    @Matt(#125) Thanks! am sure good documentation will make things easy. @Mikhilov and @Ariel …what is in the name…

  181. DHH on 30 Dec 16:50:

    ojak, if you want/need something specific that Merb offers, you should use Merb. Otherwise, or if you don’t really have an opinion either way, then you should probably just go with Rails.

    But we’ll have a nice upgrade path from each. It’ll probably be a little easier from Rails, but the Merb guys are intent on making it pretty easy from Merb 1.x too.

    So either way, you can’t really lose.

  182. BM on 30 Dec 22:33:

    Good Work,

    I would like to see more samples and very good documentation ( pdf .. please make this part of your April commitment ) like the java spring framework / spring webflow / hibernate reference documentation / jboss seam documentation, please do not make it as MSDN … i will searching for my entire life…

  183. Nimesh on 31 Dec 05:30:

    Awesome…Really great news for all rails developers…

  184. anom on 01 Jan 03:16:

    Ruby on MerbRails or is should that be Ruby on MerryRails!

  185. Brandon Zylstra on 01 Jan 08:23:

    My hat is off to all of you. I’m amazed and impressed. I couldn’t imagine better news about the future of either Rails or Merb.

  186. Toni on 01 Jan 10:38:

    Surely the best news of the year!!! I am sure that will reduce the critics and will invite even more developers. The strategy change to open rails a little bit more is the right way without loosing the control by focusing on the core.

  187. Linh Chau on 03 Jan 15:20:

    The only people who need to be worried are the developers who are going to use Rails on Merb to develop software.

    If things go well, it is great. If it is not, is there any where to go, short of abandoning Ruby altogether?

    And I don’t know if it was true that in the old day, DHH made back-room deal with Zed to make Mongrel work with Rails only, but Zed refused it.

    That was the result now we have seen a framework better than Rails (architecture-wise and coding-wise): Merb.

    Anyway, the merge (without political back-room deal) will be great.

  188. http://www.sokobanja.mobi on 04 Jan 10:12:

    Great. Hi to every one

  189. Nabeel on 05 Jan 21:09:

    That’s awesome!

  190. boosh on 07 Jan 19:31:

    Oh, different APIs… Hope it doesn’t get too blown up

  191. cyjbox on 09 Jan 03:51:

    thank you!

  192. ranjay on 15 Jan 03:09:

    Its a great news for merb and rails lover. Cheers!!!!!

  193. Sokobanja on 20 Jan 12:34:

    Thanks http://www.sokobanja.ucoz.com

  194. Paul HH on 20 Jan 23:18:

    jQuery and Rails!

    that will make this interface designer very, very happy

    makes sense to me,.. well done!

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