Distributed Ruby (DRb) "Working Well"

A new member of the JRuby community, Blane Dabney, submitted a patch for JRuby socket IO to resolve a DRb issue he'd been having. Our original implementation of a "write" method was not properly handling line terminators, and would end up blocking on write calls with nothing coming out the other end. After some investigation by us both, Blane managed to put together a simple, working patch that solves the issue.

According to him, DRb from a Ruby client to a JRuby backend now "seems to be working well." I'm letting the patch stew for a bit, but it will likely be committed to trunk in the next couple days.

The ability to use DRb from Ruby to JRuby opens up a whole new world of integration with Java services. I guess it's time one of us got busy on a DRb-to-EJB gateway, don't you think?

Conference Updates

RubyConf*MI

I am registered for RubyConf*MI, though it's still uncertain if I'll attend. The registration cost is a measly $20, but it sounds like it will be a good time. Grand Rapids is about a 9-hour drive, however, so I'm looking for someone to share transportation with from Minneapolis. I probably won't go if it's just me alone.

MinneDemo

I'll be doing a quick (<15 mins) JRuby demo at Minnesota's first DemoCamp. I have no idea what I'll demo yet, but perhaps a more elaborate IRB-based Swing demo like that I did at JavaOne.

RailsConf Europe

Various events that are in mostion and which I won't elaborate on may lead to me attending and presenting at RailsConf Europe. Hopefully those events pan out (and hopefully there's enough time between now and the conf to get Rails working suitably well).

RubyConf

I may not be presenting, but I shall attend! I managed to secure one of the coveted registrations before they sold out two hours later. Regardless of corporate reimbursement, I'm going to make the trek to Denver. I hope to do an unofficial or "lightning" session on JRuby as well, since I know there are many attendees interested in hearing about it.

Sunday Night Niblets

Camping

After a minor fix provided by Ola Bini (thanks Ola!) we now have Camping running under JRuby, using the ActiveRecord JDBC adapter. According to Ola, Camping under JRuby seems to run very well, and feels very snappy. I'm going to be playing with it a bit soon, and may have a demo site up by tomorrow.

JRuby Extras

The JRuby Extras project is officially launched on RubyForge. The ActiveRecord JDBC adapter is there and has received modifications to work with Oracle as well. The work thusfar on Mongrel is also there, and it appears that we may have Mongrel working under JRuby shortly. If you have a particular Ruby app that needs some JRuby-specific modifications or extensions, please let me know; this is a community-driven project to make Ruby apps spectacular under JRuby.