Status Update: Merb 1.0

One of key benefits of merb over the many other lightweight and more modular ruby frameworks is it has the necessary critical developer mass and funding behind it from Engine Yard http://engineyard.com

  require 'rubygems'
  require 'ramaze'
  require 'sequel'

  # Models
  module AppOne
    DB = Sequel.sqlite('app_one.db')

    class Post < Sequel::Model(DB[:posts])
      set_schema do
        primary_key :id
        varchar     :title
        text        :body
      end
    end
  end

  module AppTwo
    DB = Sequel.sqlite('app_two.db')
  
    class Post < Sequel::Model(DB[:posts])
      set_schema do
        primary_key :id
        varchar     :title
        text        :body
      end
    end
  end

  AppOne::Post.create_table!
  AppTwo::Post.create_table!
  AppOne::Post.create(:title => "app one title", :body => "app one body")
  AppTwo::Post.create(:title => "app two title", :body => "app two body")

  # Controllers
  module AppOne
    class MainController < Ramaze::Controller
      map "/app_one"
      def index
        @post = Post[1]
        "#{@post.title}<br/>#{@post.body}"
      end
    end
  end

  module AppTwo
    class MainController < Ramaze::Controller
      map "/app_two"
      def index
        @post = Post[1]
        "#{@post.title}<br/>#{@post.body}"
      end
    end
  end

  Ramaze.start :adapter => :mongrel

Here's some of what ramaze is missing:

* Some conventions (simple modules, no "plugins" please) and a space (website) to share code, such as rake tasks for sequel migrations, authentication boilerplate, etc. Ramaze needs an ecosystem of modules to allow developers to benefit from each other. I'm not a fan of cargo-culting, but rails/merb plugins do speed up development.

* Marketing/evangelism. (I'm trying).

* A more nicely integrated restful router with urls a la rails/merb conventions. While "technically" somewhat silly, all the cool kids want something like it.

I've learnt to use and love Rails and it has a massive community spanning many years, so I'm not going to jump ship because others said its cool...

Thats not to say I'm ignorant to new methods of doing things, if something is better I want to try it - but why is merb better? If you compare rails 2.2 (thinking ahead) with merb, what can I do better, faster and safer which will be worth the time I put in to learn the quirks of the framework?