Community feedback for the future of Rails
Posted by Matt Aimonetti May 21, 2009 @ 04:38 PM
A few months ago, we announced the creation of a "forum" to discuss the future of Rails and what the community is interested in. Since then, many important suggestions/topics were addressed, many features were completed or started. My goal in this post is to give you a quick overview on the status of the uservoice forum.
Suggestions mentioned and completed:
Nested Model forms This is something that was actually started before we put the forum together and this feature is now available since Rails 2.3.x
Rails magazine Olimpiu Metiu already released two issues of his Rails Magazine. The PDF versions are available for free but you can also purchase the print version.
Better Wiki A lot of people have put efforts in building the new wiki and I'm sure a lot more content will be provided. We have also made the wiki available for translation.
Accepted/started suggestions:
Improved performance This is something that already started in the Rails3 branch, go check the work done by Josh, Yehuda, Carl and others to make Rails perform even better.
Public and plugin API This is something that's particularly important for 3rd party developers and therefore plugin users. There is still a lot of work to be done with 3rd party developers and "advanced users" before we can get a fixed API. However, once we will have this API, Rails updates and plugin compatibility should be much smoother.
Slices/Engine Rails 2.3 came with the ability to have engines in your plugins and if you were at RailsConf, you might have attended Yehuda and Carl's talk on mountable apps. Thanks to some work done on the router and Action Controller, you should be able to mount a Rails app inside another one sometime in the future.
Easier to read code The refactoring has already started and the internal code should be cleaner and easier to read. Remember that Rails is 5 years old, such a task isn't easy.
Better support for non relational databases Thanks to Action ORM and some more refactoring, non RDBMS and other data stores will be better supported.
Unbind Test::Unit and Prototype Agnosticism is a big theme in Rails 3. Even though, Test::Unit and prototype will be the default, Rails won't make any assumptions about users using one framework or the other. Watch David's keynote at RailsConf for more information.
Make Action Mailer consistent with regular controllers This task was started as part of the work done on Abstract Controller.
Don't forget that you can still make your suggestions and/or pick one that is already listed and start working on it!
One of the accepted ideas is to have a free book like Django (http://rails.uservoice.com/pages/10012-rails/suggestions/97472-have-an-open-source-book-available-in-multiple-languages)
Why is this not mentioned? Are you planning to do it anyway?
@pablo thanks for pointing that out. We are planning on working on something like that for Rails3. However, because we are not there yet, I preferred not to mention the project yet.
Also, don’t forget the Rails Guides: http://guides.rubyonrails.org/ which are a great source of information.
An admin interface like django would be great too… i use both, but i like ruby\rails better… my problem is that too often i lose too much time in the admin area that not in the users, would be great to have that out of the box like in django.
Aniway good job guys.
I would like to go with suggestion by Alex.
My +1 for out of the box An admin interface like Django. Consider this request for Rails 3.0. OR… Rails 3.x if lots of work is involved.
Better late then never.
For admin interfaces I always went with http://activescaffold.com/
Is this insufficient in some way or is it just particularly important to you guys that this is baked into the framework directly?
Baked in the framework would be better… and aniway i tried activescaffold, but for my needs it isin’t this good. I would like my administration generated with views (like the normal scaffold, even withou ajax), and active scaffold doesen’t have a good support for file upload (i have one in almost every form and i had to do it by myself), the result wasn’t clean.
Alex – Surely you’ve answered your own question by saying that activescaffold doesn’t suit your needs.
The fact is that any baked in solution wouldn’t fit for a large number of people – especially those who don’t even need an admin interface.
What is needed though is a really good admin plugin that could provide all the good stuff that Django offers as soon as it is installed.
DAZ
Those interested in an admin plugin may find interesting Typus: http://github.com/fesplugas/typus/tree/master
It’s similar to the Django one and the best I’ve seen around – quite customizable too.
Thanks Raul, i’m testing it right now, and seem very cool :)
Better support for Windows!
Windows (whether we like it or not) is still dominant in the enterprise. The vast majority of Windows based Rubyists feel like red headed step children.
What about this week in edge rails? This weblog without edge updates is lonely :(
another good idea is force freeze with the rails command unless specifced im up to my ears in erros due to the fact that people just freese stuff
Great to see that work is continuing on improving performance, that has to be one of the single things PHP or other developers like to bring up when comparing rails to other languages.
Any news about Rails 3.0? How close are you guys to the finish line?
@Alex, Nathan
Another more fully featured admin panel is Radiant (radiantcms.org). You can still write all the rails apps you want on top of it.
Actually, thanks to the problems with Windows, many of us at the Chicago Tribune now have Macs. Maybe other companies will see the light :)
In your mouth
Kindly keep us informed whats going on and whats happening with Rails 3.
We are just moving around in the dark after Ruby Conference 2009. One month has passed after conference and no updates or Rails 3 Alpha /Beta on the way.
All we know is “work is under progress.”