Can Merb Knock Ruby Off Its Rails?

Engine Yard, a software developer of cloud deployment and open source tools for Ruby on Rails applications, last week released an open source framework for building fast, high-performance Ruby applications. Called "Merb," the programming tool is similar to Ruby on Rails.

Merb is an MVC (model view controller) framework. It features a modular -- rather than monolithic -- architecture with minimal, clean core code that's simple, organized and easy to extend, according to Engine Yard.

"We built Merb as a new way to do things faster. It pushes the design standards of Ruby further. It was easier to open our own strategy without having to reinvest in Rails. This release offers a full-fledged replacement for Ruby [on Rails]," Yehuda Katz, maintainer of the Merb Project, told LinuxInsider.

Coding Choice

The community of developers that built Merb designed it from the ground up for speed. It relies on an extensible, pluggable architecture. Merb has 6,000 lines of code, compared to 70,000 to 80,000 lines of code in Ruby. The smaller code base makes Merb more modular, according to Katz.

Despite its minimal code base, Merb offers features such as flexible routing, more control over groups of processes and a coherent maintained stack. Additional features can be plugged into the framework using standard gems. Moreover, Merb is agnostic when it comes to object-relational mapping (ORM) tools, JavaScript libraries and template languages. This gives programmers a wide range of choice.

Ruby is one of the fastest growing programming languages in terms of adoption, said Ezra Zygmuntowicz, founder of the Merb Project and cofounder of Engine Yard.

"Merb offers Ruby programmers another choice for building Ruby applications. We believe this release of Merb and the community enthusiasm we've seen for the project since its inception are testament to a healthy and robust Ruby ecosystem," he said.

Community Roots

The development community started the Merb Project in 2006. Until last January, Merb was just an experiment.

Then the developers began building toward version 1.0 as a real release, according to Katz. The push for growing Merb into an official software tool led Zygmuntowicz to form Engine Yard.

The release of Merb 1.0 makes it the first replacement for Ruby on Rails, he said.

Merb Highlights

Merb gives developers a higher degree of configurability and modularity than that offered by Rails, according to Engine Yard. A pool of plug-ins enables software developers working on smaller applications to replicate common Rails tasks with less overhead and a higher degree of customization.

A key feature in Merb 1.0 is the "Merb Stack," a gem for fast, out-of-the-box deployment. Using it, developers can start building new applications instead of creating their own complete stack.

Another key trait is its single master process rather than several disparate processes, which allows groups of Merb processes to share memory. This produces more efficient handling of multiple requests over short periods of time and better control over groups of Merb processes.

Future Plans

Engine yard is already working on the release of Merb 2.0. A main addition will be an application programming interface to allow users to modify the code without breaking the modules, said Katz.

The targeted release date is the summer or fall of 2009. In the interim, the company will make incremental releases of what will become the building blocks for new features in Merb.

"So when 2.0 is released, most of the components will already be in place," Katz said.

Final Details

Go here for a full list of Merb 1.0 features.

Merb is licensed under the MIT License. To download Merb 1.0, go here.