Blog: Ruby on Rails on Track for Major Upgrades

Ruby on Rails on Track for Major Upgrades
InfoWorld (01/12/09) Krill, Paul

Ruby on Rails is expected to undergo significant changes in 2009, including an upgrade in January that will feature several enhancements and a merger with the Merb Web framework later in the year. The 2.3 release of the open source Rails framework features performance optimizations, customizable templates, memory savings, and the ability to write the most performance-dependent parts in Ruby. The update also will feature HTTP Digest Authentication, an API for authentication. Version 3.0 of Rails, which is expected sometime around May, will merge Rails with Merb, and the 2.3 release will serve as a precursor to new version. For example, the respond_to block capability in Rails, which allows an application to respond to a single request with HTML, XML, or JavaScript, is 8 percent faster in Rails 2.3, which was made possible by Yehuda Katz, a new Rails core team member who was previously at Merb. Rails 2.3 also features a new templates capability that enables the creation of templates already fitted with specific capabilities such as plug-ins. Rails 3.0 will contain several ideas from Merb, such as framework agnosticism that will work with Rails' emphasis on strong defaults, and routing for mapping browser requests.

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