A Ruby Web Application Framework

You’ve asked for it, and now you’ve got it. You can now find Mack on Lighthouse, http://lighthouse.mackframework.com. So from now on if you find any bugs, etc… please head on over there, and fill out a simple ticket, and let the bug tracking fun begin!

Tonight I gave a presentation on Mack at the Boston Ruby Users Group. I like to think the presentation went very well. Lot’s of great questions and feedback. Thanks to everyone who came.

For those who couldn’t make it, and for those who did, here is the slide deck I presented:

Mack (Boston Ruby Users Group) Presentation

Enjoy!

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

For those of you who haven’t yet switched to Mack (and why not?) the new Advanced Rails Recipes book is now shipping from the Pragmatic Programmers. The book features 84 recipes for build apps using Ruby on Rails. It just so happens that two of these recipes happen to be written by yours truly. That’s right, I’m now a published author. :) 

I suggest that everyone get yourself a copy of the book, read it top to bottom, then head on over to GitHub and incorporate some of what you’ve just learned into Mack.

Anyway, I just want to give a quick shout out to my boy Mike Clark who compiled and edited the book. He’s a great guy and he did a great job. Thanks Mike!

So a lot has been made in the last few days about my decision to drop ActiveRecord’s native support in Mack. People have asked why can’t I keep what I already have in regards to support for ActiveRecord, and why can’t I support Sequel. So, I’ve decided to compromise.

In the next version of Mack, which should be out in the next day or two, I’ve broken out support for ActiveRecord and DataMapper into their own gems, http://github.com/markbates/mack-orm/tree/master. That means you’ll be able to still use ActiveRecord, if you want. The default ORM, however, will be DataMapper. That’s what you’ll get out of the box with Mack.

Now, keeping with my original post, I’ll be actively maintaining the mack-data_mapper gem, and when I can I’ll make similar changes to the mack-active_record, but I’m not promising anything. Now the good thing here is that since the repos for these gems are on GitHub, anyone can contribute changes/additions to them. I’ve even put a stub in there for Sequel support, that’s definitely something someone else will have to support.

This also has a nice advantage in keeping the Mack core clean and simple. Hopefully this will all lead to faster development time turn around for Mack.

It’s also worth noting that when I talk about ‘native’ support, all I mean is some Rake tasks and some generators. There’s nothing stopping anyone from using ANY ORM with Mack. You could even create your own, if you really wanted to.

Here’s to hoping this makes everyone happy!