After the successful (so far, it seems) release of 1.0.0.Beta20, we’re now committed to the Beta21 codeline. Lots of development on Beta21 has been on-going for a few months on a branch. We love git.

Beta21 development has now moved to the master branch. You may certainly use the 1.0.0.Beta20 tag if you need access to the just-released code.

From a developer or code-spelunker perspective, Beta21 has changed how things work. If you’re simply a user of TorqueBox, this is all irrelevant and probably uninteresting.

Maven

The first obvious change is that building TorqueBox requires Maven 3.0-Beta-1.

Additionally, we are using (a fork of) mkristian’s jruby-maven-plugins to manage gem dependencies through the Maven dependency mechanisms. Before Beta21 rolls, we’ll get our fork and mkristian’s all merged back happy.

Code Structure

Since JBoss AS has profiles which enable or disable various services, and TorqueBox augments these services, we’ve now broken the deployer into service-oriented chunks.

What this means is that we can now assemble an AS from more finely-grained pieces. If you’re running a profile that doesn’t support messaging, that portion of TorqueBox can also be removed. The hope is that we eventually allow deployment of only the pieces you really want, instead of a monolithic AS for every use-case.

The basis of these chunks is the components/ directory.

It contains directories for components such as

• Base Ruby interpreter integration
• Rack integration
• Rails integration
• Messaging integration
• Scheduler integration

Each of these modules is also sub-divided into a core module with POJOesque implementations, spi module for interfaces on Java-extensible bits, and an int module provide integration into the JBoss VDF which powers the AS deployment model.

All of this subdivision may be ill-conceived, since we currently have 63 Maven POMs. Yes. 63.

There’s also:

• containers/
• clients/

Containers

Containers is where we’ve taken @alrubinger’s Embedded/Bootstrap code, wrapped it in Ruby, and now allow booting up various small bits of TorqueBox. From either bin/ scripts included in our gems, or from your own script.rb.

In about 1 second, you can boot up a HornetQ client wired up to your Ruby message processors. You can also launch a HornetQ message-broker (and JNDI naming service) from with your own scripts in about the same amount of time.

Here, we’re using the fine-grained modules mentioned above.

Clients

While we previously had a messaging client, we’ve re-worked it, along with coming up with a saner strategy for other clients (such as JNDI…). These are now easy-to-consume RubyGems you can use from any JRuby script.

Tests

We’ve finally started writing a lot of tests.

Java code has vastly improved coverage using JUnit, while a lot of Ruby code is covered by RSpec tests. We have significantly more confidence in the quality of TorqueBox as we approach the 1.0.0.Beta21 release.

VFS

Mostly invisible to any user, we’ve updated to VFS3 (1.0.0.Beta20 was based on AS 6m2, which used VFS2).
This integration is becoming more solid, and allows Ruby scripts to be ignorant of the fact they are being run from within a JAR package. Packing ruby sources inside a JAR really screws with things like __FILE__ and Dir.glob(...). VFS allows you to forget these woes forever.

The VFS stuff is usable outside of TorqueBox, but does require manipulation of $JRUBY_HOME/lib in addition to the installation of a RubyGem. We continue to work with the JRuby team to hopefully one day get VFS as a blessed part of the JRuby distribution.

Removals

Until we can figure out a sane way to manage it, we’re temporarily removing the Mobicents integration. It will return though. We think telecom integration is an awesome thing to have.

We’ve also removed the SOAP integration, because we had no love for it. We’d be willing to have a community member knock it back into shape though. If anyone cares about SOAP.

Thus…

The 1.0.0.Beta21 code still has some rough edges and things to do, so give 1.0.0.Beta20 a whirl. But know that awesome things are coming down the pipeline this summer for enterprise-worthy Ruby.

And honestly, I’m trying to break my perma-beta mentality, and get this sucker to a 1.0.0.Final release while it’s still warm outside.

Hooray, TorqueBox 1.0.0.Beta20 is available, finally.

Go download it and read the documentation.

This release primarily includes

• Update of JRuby to 1.5.1
• Update of Rails to 2.3.8

A few extra small issues were solved.

This is what JIRA thinks we’ve accomplished:

Bug

• [TORQUE-58] - OpenSSL::HMAC.digest fails inside container
• [TORQUE-60] - Deploying a Rails app fails due to VFS
• [TORQUE-62] - Broken Download Link in Installation Section of Documentation
• [TORQUE-64] - Host must be set in descriptor if context is set to root
• [TORQUE-70] - If an application uses app/tasks/** async tasks, they do not work unless it also has a queues.yml
• [TORQUE-74] - Beta 19 Chapter 6 documentation typos
• [TORQUE-77] - task issues on both torquebox beta19 and master branch
• [TORQUE-78] - JRuby 1.5 support

Task

• [TORQUE-17] - Enable pooling configuration for scheduled jobs (pooling.yml)
• [TORQUE-56] - Add GemCutter to the default gem sources in TorqueBox.
• [TORQUE-83] - Update Rails version that ships with TorqueBox
• [TORQUE-84] - Update doc for 'rackup' config param

Well, it’s been over 4 months since 1.0.0.Beta19 was released, and three since the last blog post. I figured it’s time to communicate with the community.

Jim Crossley has joined the TorqueBox team in the last few weeks, and has hit the ground running. Due to his efforts, later this week we’ll see 1.0.0.Beta20 released, with a few minor bugfixes and update of JRuby.

Shortly after that (for some value of “shortly”), 1.0.0.Beta21 will be released, which brings about major changes, including being based off JBoss AS6 instead of AS5.

Additionally, we’ve been working furiously improving the HornetQ integration and providing ways to use smaller portions of TorqueBox as gems from arbitrary Ruby scripts.

We’re nearing what we’d call “feature complete” for a good v1.0 release. We still aim to spend some time on…

• More unit testing
• Performance testing
• Packaging and distribution
• Ecosystem integration (capistrano, rake)

Longer-term (v2.0+), we’ll be focusing on bringing in more advanced functionality such as transaction management to truly make Ruby “enterprisey”.

Additionally, expect some cross-over from Marek’s CirrAS project, to make TorqueBox in the cloud (EC2, etc) super simple and effective.

After spending countless hours discussing TorqueBox with a variety of people, many of them European, I’ve come to the conclusion that the project is poorly named.

Specifically, the French tend to pronounce “Torque” with two syllables, which vaguely resembles the word “Turkey”.

Sometimes you have to pick your battles, and this is one I’m willing to cede. Henceforth, this enterprise-grade Ruby application server previously known as TorqueBox is now simply TurkeyBox.

Thanks to James Cobb, designer extraordinaire, we have a new logo.

Finally, TorqueBox 1.0.0.Beta19 is out.

Go download it and read the documentation.

This release first and foremost includes an update to being based upon JBoss AS 6.0.0 milestone 2. To accomplish the upgrade, we’ve reworked the Maven-based build system to be linked at the elbow with the core JBoss AS build.

Additionally, on top of that, in fact, quite exceptionally, TorqueBox now uses JBoss HornetQ to power it’s messaging. Even regular JBoss AS doesn’t do that yet.

This release also sees some major changes and improvements to not just asynchronous tasks, but MQ integration in general. Be sure to check out the documentation, as new features have been added and APIs have changed some. That’s why we call it beta.

The next release will focus on some much-needed internal cleanup, a documentation refresh, and perhaps an examination of Rails 3. So far, this release ships with Rails 2.3.4.

This is what JIRA thinks we’ve accomplished:

Bug

• TORQUE-57 - ActionController::send_data and send_file fail quietly
• TORQUE-59 - Queue payloads object to complex objects

Task

• TORQUE-66 - Update Torquebox download link in documentation
• TORQUE-67 - Upgrade to JBoss AS 6 milestone 2
• TORQUE-68 - Integrate HornetQ for messaging