Google Commissions Ten Ruby Libs #
Hey, the announced list of ten libraries (from 84 proposed) which will be available at end of summer, thanks to intrepid pairs of Rubyists who sought out the stipend. So, what do we know about these projects?
- Ruby Reports: Rails integration, unifying layout formats (like RedCloth, PDF::Writer, and FasterCSV) and general smartness. (Gregory’s full proposal.)
- Ruby-Breakpoint: Cross-platform GUI and stepping support. (Florian’s proposal.)
- Smart web scraping, heuristics for finding information in a web page. (Alex’s explanation.)
- Simple Ruby widget kit for OpenGL, based on librend. (Ilmari’s grail quest outlined.)
- Mkrf, a mkmf lib for Rake. (Kevin’s outline.)
- Automatic administration center for Nitro objects. (Gabriele’s keeping a blog.)
Do the other six four projects want to come forward and tell us a bit more? The first and the last sound highly oooooH! but their titles are evasive… somehow… Even just post your proposal to Ruby-Talk and I’ll link it here.
The beloved Ryan Leavengood also has an essay of comfort to help the rejected take heart. All about how they made up their minds and how to get into the program.
coops
I believe kevinclark in the Caboose got one too. You might want to ask him.
Kian
Ruby Reports looks very cool. Might even have to contribute to that one. I had to roll my own last fall for a Rails project. Wish Ruport had been available then…
Jon Leighton
I’m excited about Ruby being ported to Symbian! I would love to write Ruby code on/for my mobile. I’m very interested to hear more about this project.
trans
Agree about Reports. A large project I worked on a number of years ago was never finished, for a number of reason, but one of them was the lack of such a tool. But I hope Rails integration doesn’t mean Rails dependency.
Kevin Clark
Hi _why. I wrote up a basic summary for mkrf here: http://www.ruby-forum.com/topic/66903#83261
Alex Bradbury
Why, I think you meant to link to “Alex’s explanation” rather than “Victor’s explanation” for my smart web scraping proposal. I just quoted Victor’s request for more information at the top. Google briefly allowed people to view the accepted proposal on the Summer of Code site yesterday, but temporarily disabled this so student’s can remove and personal information that may be present. I think it should be back within a week.
Dudley
trans: I’m pretty sure “Rails integration” means “I don’t use Rails but all these people won’t stop asking me if Ruport can work with Rails so I guess I have to do something about it.” I wouldn’t worry about it becoming a dependency. I think the plan is to abstract the database stuff out (it only works through dbi now) so that it’ll work with dbi, or ActiveRecord, or Lafcadio, or whatever.
Ryan Leavengood
Wow, I’ve never been called beloved before. It gives a warm, fuzzy feeling.
Seriously though, I learned a lot this year when sorting through the applications, so hopefully my advice will be useful for those hoping to make it next year.
Gregory
trans: Ruby Reports will not see Rails/ActiveRecord dependencies in the near future. I will be building some abstractions in the library that make it easy to use ActiveRecord as a data source, and I’ll be builder either plugins or application helpers or something of the like to bring Ruport into rails with style.
Suggestions on how best to do this by experienced railsers is surely welcome.
Kian: Contributions are welcome! See my how to help document for a starting point
_why: Thanks for posting about our proposals up here. Makes me feel all smarmy or something :)