Meta Bates

Happy New Year everyone!

With the help of the absolutely amazing multiruby library and an edge version of rspec from GitHub, the latest version of Configatron now supports JRuby 1.1.6 and Ruby 1.9.1rc1. There are no other functional changes to the library, so it’s a full drop in replacement for vesion 2.1.6.

I highly encourage everyone to checkout multiruby and start upgrading their libraries so we can all move to 1.9 quicker, which means more speed and more power. Once we’re all in 1.9 land we can really make use of some of the amazing features it provides.

Anyway, I’ll be working on upgrading all my libraries and applications to work on 1.8 and 1.9, and hopefully JRuby, over the next couple of months. So be on the look out for a new versions of Cachetastic, Genosaurus [update: Genosaurus already works with 1.9 and JRuby. Hoorah!], and, of course, Mack.

I know that with every release I say something like, “This is a big release”, but the fact of the matter is this is a big release. Amongst the 49 tickets that make up release 0.7.0, there are two in particular that are at the core of Mack’s very existence, they are Distributed Objects and Distributed Views/Layouts.

Back on March 26th Mack 0.4.0 was released. This release brought the first of three large distributed features, Distributed Routes. With 0.7.0 Mack fully realizes it’s goal of making it easy to write fully distributed web applications. There is a very nice wiki page, on our new wiki, that shows in detail how to use the new distributed features. That page can found here. Also, don’t forget to watch the screencast of the new distributed features that can be found here.

Distributed Objects

Distributed objects allow you to easily distribute access to your library and model code amongst any of your other Mack applications. Allowing this access is as simple as requiring the mack-distributed gem, adding a few lines to your configuration, and starting the mack_ring_server binary. ‘Client’ applications just need to require the mack-distributed gem.

Distributed Views/Layouts

With distributed views and layouts you can now share the look and feel from one application with all of your applications. Configuration and use is just as easy using distributed objects.

Form and HTML Helpers

People have been requesting more HTML and form helper methods, and we’re more than happy to comply. There are whole bunch of these new methods now to help you more easily build your applications. The generators have been updated to use these new methods, to make your job even easier. There is also now support for doing Date/Time drop downs, similar to Rails and Merb.

‘Tell’ Messaging

Rails folks know ‘tell’ messaging as ‘flash’ messaging and Merb folks know it as ‘message’ messaging. We went with ‘tell’. Tell messages are cleared after any non-redirect request. They’re a great way to send a simple message down to the client.

New Wiki

With this release there is also a new wiki at, http://www.mackwiki.com. This new wiki, incidentally built using Mack 0.7.0, will house all the tutorials and how-to’s for Mack. There are a few entries from the old wiki that still need to brought over during the next day or two.

Changelog:

• [#114] Javascript link_helper
• [#112] Error generating mack application
• [#109] DataMapper 0.9.4
• [#103] Log colors for the console are now configurable per log level.
• [#102] New association method in data_factory
• [#101] Update to file upload testing (build_file -> file_for_upload, and multipart support in put)
• [#100] Inline routing parameters are being mutated
• [#99] Upgraded to facets 2.4.3
• [#98] Fixed mack-facets not being loaded before app_config files.
• [#97] Fixed sessions only working with ‘local_memory’ mode
• [#96] Distributed Views module now uses file cache
• [#92] Removed deprecated app_config.orm code.
• [#91] Fixed Mack blowing up if there is no config/initializers/gems.rb file.
• [#90] Added deprecation system.
• [#89] rake gems:* will now only display warning if any gem required is not installed (and not break)
• [#88] Implemented pending SQLite3 tests in mack-activerecord
• [#87] Refactored out common ORM code from mack-active_record and mack-data_mapper into mack-orm
• [#86] stylesheet link helper
• [#85] Refactored out Mack::ViewHelpers::HtmlHelpers into Mack::ViewHelpers::HtmlHelpers, Mack::ViewHelpers::FormHelpers and Mack::ViewHelpers::linkHelpers
• [#84] Added Mack::Distributed.lookup(url) to retrieve specific distributed services.
• [#83] Added mail_to HTML helper.
• [#82] Added ACL support to mack-distributed
• [#81] Fixed sessions working with redirects in testing
• [#80] Distributed objects present both the DRb::DRbObject inspect and the original object’s inspect when asked.
• [#79] Renamed app_config.mack.use_distributed_routes to app_config.mack.share_routes
• [#76] Move mack_ring_server to mack-distributed
• [#75] Left over mack-distributed rake tasks
• [#74] Added optional feature to disable initialization logging.
• [#73] Tests no longer use the functional/unit directories
• [#69] Added ViewHelperGenerator and ControllerHelperGenerator
• [#68] Transactional support in mack-AR
• [#67] Added test:setup tasks for active_record and data_mapper
• [#62] Removed const redefined warnings if mack-l10n is used along with mack-activerecord
• [#39] HAML 2.0.2 support
• [#28] Refactored out encryption into the mack-encryption gem.
• [#25] Added ControllerGenerator
• [#19] Added HTML form helpers
• [#15] File upload testing support (ability to do multipart form post in testing)
• [#11] Distributed Layout/Views
• [#10] Added distributed objects to mack-distributed.
• [#8] Move distributed code from mack-core to mack-more
• [#5] Added tell messaging
• gem: genosaurus 1.2.2
• gem: haml 2.0.2
• gem: addressable 1.0.4
• gem: facets 2.4.3
• gem: data_mapper 0.9.4

At RubyConf a bunch of us sat around a few glasses of beer and had a ‘bitch’ session about the state of Ruby Gems, a system we all consider be rather sub-par. At that session Tracy Flynn, friend and colleague of yours truly, said we should do something about it. He suggested we write RubyOpals. Well, Tracy is putting his money where his mouth is, http://github.com/tflynn/rubyopals/tree/master. I can tell you that I for one, can’t wait for Ruby Opals! I’ve already forked the project and started contributing! As soon as the first version is ready for release, I can tell you that Mack, Cachetastic, Genosaurus, etc… will all be the first available as opals.

I highly encourage all of you out there to add this project to your ‘watch’ list on GitHub. And if you have the time, and want to help write something special, I highly encourage you to fork it and start contributing! Time to get out there and start making the Ruby world a much, much, much better place.

I know I’ve been talking about this release for a while now, and here it finally is. There’s some good bug fixes in here, a few new rake tasks, and some other little things like that.

The biggest thing, however, is what’s been causing a stir online now for the past few days, I’ve split out the ORM support into separate gems. I’m not going to go over it again, you can find all the details here: http://www.mackframework.com/2008/05/04/orms-and-mack/

Needless to say this is a good release to get, if not for the bug fixes alone, but for the great db:create rake tasks that are now in there. Thanks, again, to Darsono Sutedja for his great contributions.

Changelog

• Added rake db:create and db:create:all rake tasks.
• Refactored out constants, such as MACK_ROOT and MACK_ENV and made them into Mack::Configuration.env, Mack::Configuration.root, etc…
• Added test:stats and test:coverage Rake tasks.
• Removed support for ActiveRecord and DataMapper and moved them into their own gems.
• Fixed a bug where yields in ERB weren’t giving the desired results.
• DataMapper database.yml file can now be nested, and is generated as such.
• Cleaned up some tests, and refactored the HTML generation stuff.
• Fixed a bug with the scaffold generating ‘bad’ methods instead of ‘post’
• Made error_messages_for more compatible with DataMapper.
• Fixed a bug loading url.rb and uploaded_file.rb found by Phil Darnowsky
• [dsutedja] Render method (in controller_base) now accepts response status code.
• gem: mack_ruby_core_extensions 0.1.23
• gem: genosaurus 1.1.4
• gem: datamapper 0.3.2
• gem: rcov 0.8.1.2.0
• gem: mack-data_mapper 0.5.0
• gem: erubis 2.6.0