Hobo - the web application builder for Rails

So here I am at the Ruby Fools conference in Copenhagen, and I did say we were going to try and have some new stuff ready by now. We’re nearly there. Stay tuned over the next few days.

First off though, I better deflate your expectations a bit. I don’t know if this was my fault for wording the last blog post badly, but a few people seem to have gained some pretty wild expectations about what’s coming. Terms like “fully documented” and even (gasp) “version 1.0″ have been bouncing around. Sorry folks, there’s good stuff coming but I never meant to give you that idea. Apologies for any confusion.

What is coming is this — we are turning the corner and focussing our energy on making Hobo into something everyone can use. That means breaking it up into parts, and writing more documentation and tests. The process has begun, and the first installment is on the way. Here’s what we’re about to put out. (If you know where to look you’ll know that some of these things are in fact available already. We’re just holding off from the ‘official’ release so we can promote the new stuff properly in a few places).

• Hobo 0.7.4
• HoboSupport as a separate gem (core Ruby extensions). With full docs!
• HoboFields plugin. This is something a lot of people have asked for — the migration generator as a separate plugin. HoboFields will be well documented too :-)
• Significant improvements to the current Hobo tutorial (the POD classified ads application)
• An entirely new tutorial — this is the one I delivered today at the conference. It goes through the full development of an app for tracking an agile development process (sort of a mini Mingle). Runs to 13 pages when printed.
• A DRYML guide covering all of the basic facilities that DRYML provides.
• A revamped hobocentral.net
• Very nice online access to the source-code and commit log (from a service you may have heard of)
• A very nice ticketing system that won’t drown in spam like the last one (also from a service you may know)
• Possibly some other stuff I’ve forgotten because this is all off the top of my head and it’s kinda late.

So it’s not 1.0 and it’s not fully documented but I hope it’s enough to demonstrate that we’re serious about moving Hobo in the right direction now. And like I said, it’s nearly ready. Watch this space.