Merb 1.0 Released

Merb - a much heralded, highly flexible Ruby-based Web application framework - has reached version 1.0 after two years of development. Congratulations to Merb’s creator, Ezra Zygmuntowicz, and to the large group of associated developers (such as Yehuda Katz and Matt Aimonetti) who’ve kept adding features and pushed Merb forward to be a significant alternative to Rails.

Ruby Inside has been some surveys for the past couple of months, and they still show that only 25% of Ruby Inside’s visitors have ever developed a Merb application. With the stability that the 1.0 release offers (older versions of Merb had a reputation - fair or not - for a constantly shifting API), it’s now a great time to give Merb a try. It’s also a great time to get into writing tutorials and documentation!

Quick Start

Install Merb from Rubyforge: gem install merb

If you’d rather go from Merb’s “edge” repository: gem install merb –source http://edge.merbivore.com

NOTE: Make sure that you are running RubyGems 1.3.0 or higher (run gem -v to check). If not, you need to upgrade (I found this page very useful for doing that.

Then follow a tutorial such as Life On The Edge with Merb, DataMapper & RSpec, Slapp: A Simple Chat Wall Merb Tutorial or Move Over Rails. Here Comes Merb.

Once you’re ready to roll, bookmark this page for safe keeping and read on for our Merb resources! We’ve divided them up into sections to make it easier. Some will also be left in the comments by other readers!