Announcement: radiantpostfixextension release 1.0

I have just released a new extension for Radiant. From the description:

With this Radiant extension you can manage a small Postfix virtual domain. A Postfix virtual domain allows you to forward e-mail to another e-mail address. The extensions adds a tab to the admin screens of Radiant in which you to enter the redirects. It also supports crude but effective aliases and mail-lists. In addition the Postfix configuration is verified and instructions will be displayed if something is not right.

Here is an screendump to see the effect.

The first release, boldly named 1.0, should work under Radiant 0.6.3 and up.

Please visit the Radiant Postfix Extension project home.

Update 2008-04-21: just released version 1.1 as a file had the wrong name.

I finally made up my mind

Those who read this blog more often may have noticed the minor change in the sub-title. It now reads:

Experiences from a hard core Java programmer that finally decided Ruby is a very very nice language, but rather stays on the JVM.

Compare it to the previous text:

Experiences from a hard core Java programmer that struggles with the question of switching to the world of Ruby and Ruby on Rails.

So how did I come to this conclusion? Here are some random considerations:

• I have only once in the last 2 years used Ruby professionally (to do some counting in a site dump).
• I do have 3 Ruby sites running (one Camping and two using Radiant). So I am not going to stop using Ruby anytime soon.
• ActiveRecord totally kicks ass and is hugely impressive. Rails for the rest not so much (totally old school request response based, with like JSP code in the templates). It may be just my lack of experience, so don't base your opinion on this.
• I am very addicted to correct refactoring and code completion.
• As I wrote before, we now have Scala.
• Update 2008-01-23: This one needs to be added. Since I recently became a father, it is simply too much to keep track of 2 worlds at the same time.

So if you expected me to be on amsterdam.rb right now, here is why.

Getting started with Ruby on Ubuntu 7.10

 

Update 20100922: Apparently this article is so out of date that I even get e-mail to get this article down (or replace it).

Therefore: please do not use this article, in fact don't even rely on the Ubuntu packages as they are not all maintained properly.

One approach that may be fine (I did not try, don't blame me), is on http://krainboltgreene.github.com/l/3/. Good luck!

 

 

So now I have a new server, and a new 10Mbit/s internet connection. Its time for some applications! Here are my experiences with installing Rails, Radiant and Camping on a fresh Ubuntu 7.10 server installation.

First of all, if your server is running in a closet somewhere (like mine) or worse: in a remote data center, you need to disable apt-get asking for the installation CD. Edit /etc/apt/sources.list and comment the line that refers to the installation cdrom.

The next step of course it to install Ruby and Ruby Gems: sudo apt-get install ruby rubygems ruby1.8-dev Without the ruby1.8-dev you can not do much, don't forget it!

Where would you be without irb? The default install however does not link it! sudo ln -s /usr/bin/irb1.8 /usr/bin/irb

Any serious Ruby web application uses Mongrel. However, Mongrel compiles some of its stuff during the install. So you first need to get the compilation tools:
sudo apt-get install make gcc libc6

Mongrel is a trusted enterprise application nowadays, so you can install it with a certificate:

wget http://rubyforge.org/frs/download.php/25325/mongrel-public_cert.pem
gem cert --add mongrel-public_cert.pem
rm mongrel-public_cert.pem
gem install mongrel --include-dependencies -P HighSecurity

Select the highest version followed by (ruby).

Luckily, installing Rails is still a simple: sudo gem install rails --include-dependencies

If you want Camping, you'll first need to install sqlite: sudo apt-get install libsqlite3 libsqlite3-dev

Now you can:

sudo gem install camping --source http://code.whytheluckystiff.net
sudo gem install camping-omnibus --source http://code.whytheluckystiff.net

Radiant is a simple: sudo gem install radiant

For some reason the gem executables do not get added to the path. Make sure they do by adding /var/lib/gems/1.8/bin to your path. For example by adding the following line at the end of /etc/bash.bashrc: export PATH="$PATH:/var/lib/gems/1.8/bin".

The favorite database amongst Railers is of course MySQL. I assume you selected LAMP during the Ubuntu server installation, that means you already have MySQL installed. To use MySQL with ActiveRecord, its best to install the MySQL native adapter. Before you can install that, you first need to install all the compile stuff from above and some more: sudo apt-get install libmysqlclient15-dev sudo gem install mysql Again, for the gem select highest version number followed by (ruby).

Have fun!

Making a site within 1 hour

Pardon my little pause on this blog. I just got a son: Milo. Feel free to look at Milo's website. I build it with Radiant. It took me, including the first content, less then 1 hour!

RubyEnRails 2007 site is live! (Dutch)

Vanaf vandaag kunnen mensen zich aanmelden voor RubyEnRails dag 2007! Op de website http://2007.rubyenrails.nl kan je je aanmelden met je OpenID.

Het sprekers gedeelte op de pagina is nog niet volledig. De lijst met sprekers zal zo spoedig mogelijk worden aangevuld. Er zullen diverse presentaties plaatsvinden over o.a. RESTful ontwikkeling, Behaviour Driven Development, Radiant en het Camping Framework.

Dus ben jij een Ruby On Rails specialist of ben je gewoon geïnteresseerd in Ruby of Ruby on Rails? Meldt je dan nu aan! Deelname is overigens geheel gratis!

Vooraankondiging Ruby En Rails 2007 (Dutch)

Binnenkort is het weer zover. Een nieuwe Ruby En Rails dag. Vorig jaar was het een zeer geslaagde, zonnige en gezellige dag waar veel Rails en Ruby enthousiastelingen aanwezig waren.

Ook voor dit jaar zijn we bezig om weer een dag te organiseren. Er wordt druk gezocht naar een lokatie (waarschijnlijk Amsterdam) en we zijn aan het inventariseren welke sprekers uitgenodigd worden. Waarschijnlijk zal het allemaal plaatsvinden op 31 mei, maar het is 7 juni geworden.

Heb je zelf nog goede ideeën of verzoeken m.b.t. sprekers op deze dag, surf dan naar Ruby en Rails en laat iets achter in de comments. Je kunt ook een e-mail sturen naar danny at rubyenrails.nl.

We zijn op zoek naar sprekers voor:

• Presentaties van 45-50 minuten;
• Lightning Quickies™ van 5-15 minuten.

Mogelijke onderwerpen:

• Handige Ruby libraries (gems)
• Rails plugins
• Interessante real-world toepassingen van Rails
• Tips & truuks, leuke vondsten, enzovoorts

Update 2007-03-20 De datum is intussen vast gezet op 7 juni. Ruby en Rails 2007 wordt gehouden in het gebouw van de Hogeschool van Amsterdam nabij het Amstel station.

Mule patch accepted

Another product that accepted my patch. Till today I was proud to have patches in the following products:
- Xml2Db (specification for an aspect of the API, no code, long time ago)
- Struts (something with generating session ids, not long ago enough)
- Wicket (MixedUrlEncoding, other patches pending)
- Spring (a small documentation error)

Today this is extended with: - Mule (MailMessageAdapter potentially adds "null" string)

These were all small things, but I am still proud I was able to move open source further :)

For the future: I wrote a Camping application to manage a virtual e-mail domain for Postfix. My plan is to convert this to a Radiant extension and make it available under the MIT license.

Back to Radiant

In one of my first posts I talked about Radiant. Having tons of other stuff to do, it dropped below my horizon. Because I am still on the mailing list, I saw a presentation passing by from Nathan Wright. The presentation is a beauty for first time Radiant users. I can highly recommend it if you like Ruby and are searching for something to build a simple site.

Because I can't find a download, I've put it on my home server for now. So here it is:

Radius, Content Management Simplified (5.6Mb)
Denver Derailed meeting September 27, 2006
Covers Radiant version 0.5.2 By Nathan Wright

Update 2006-10-02: Thanks to Luis Lavena for providing a more solid server.

Update 2006-10-04: The link above is now pointing to Nathan's own blog.

Update 2007-03-06: All previous links are now dead. I placed the copy on my home server back.

CMS blues

Somehow CMS systems always have disadvantages (even the ones I wrote myself e.g. BackStream's ECMS :) ). They are always of one or more of too proprietary, too large, too strict, too flexible, not multilingual, without workflow, too data oriented (instead of task oriented), too hard to configure, too hard to program, too slow, too ugly URLs, too etc. etc.

I am currently looking into a Ruby on Rails CMS called Radiant. So far it has the following pros:
- it is nice to look at
- it is still small
- it pretty powerful while still easy to follow (possible thanks to Ruby)

It still needs a lot of work. For example there is currently not even support for images and stylesheets. Still the way things are structured make me think this CMS will come a long way towards the ultimate CMS. Lets spend some more time on this...