The Roadmap describes the upcoming features in RailsBricks that are currently worked on. If you have any suggestion or would like to participate, get in touch!

RailsBricks 3 is in the oven

The work on RailsBricks 3 is already well advanced. As of now, RailsBricks 2.x won’t receive any more updates and will be retired when version 3 gets released.

The goal for RailsBricks 3 is to provide more features while being easier to use. The code is not based on RailsBricks 2 but a complete rewrite. The following features are being worked on:

  • Different templates for the generated app UI
  • Choice of database engine
  • Easy integration of Google Analytics at generation time
  • More choices for production environments such as Unicorn config

If you have a feature request, now is the time to send it!

RailsBricks 3 is not yet available through gem install on RubyGems but if you want to try it already, you can clone the rb3 branch on Github and then gem build and gem install locally.

As soon as the documentation is completed and the new video edited, RailsBricks 3 will be available on RubyGems like any other gem.

RailsBricks 3 will be available early next week
posted 12 days ago

RailsBricks 3 is ready and has been tested. It packs several new awesome features. It will be released early next week as the documentation and the new site still need some tweaks. Follow @railsbricks on Twitter to know when it goes live!

RailsBricks 3 is in the oven…
posted about 2 months ago

The work on RailsBricks 3 has started and is already well advanced. Currently in alpha, version 3 will be released before September ends.

The future of RailsBricks 2.x

As of now, RailsBricks 2.x won’t receive updates anymore. Version 2.3.0 released today was the last one.

As soon as RailsBricks 3 hits the stage where it is publicly released, version 2 will be retired completely. The RailsBricks Github repository will host RailsBricks 3.

There’s a need for RailsBricks 3

RailsBricks was initially created to make my life easier. Over time, it became a popular tool to quickly generate a Rails application and automatically set up some basic functionalities like creating a user admin section.

Unfortunately, even though RailsBricks 2 is fully functional and serves its purpose well, the code has become bloated. This is mostly due to a lack of time on my part. Therefore, I started working on RailsBricks 3 with two things in mind:

  • a better documentation
  • a better code design in order to make my life easier maintaining it

This will also serve to encourage more developers to contribute code to the project.

Also, with more experience building apps with RailsBricks, I notice some missing features that would fit perfectly with the vision I have of what RailsBricks should be. One of them is a better handling of production configuration.

I got many feature requests as well. Offering a choice for a database engine, for example. This will be added to RailsBricks 3. Some feature requests such as a different templating engine won’t be considered, though. I don’t plan for RailsBricks to be everything to everyone.

Some features added, some removed

RailsBricks 3 will have several new features. Among them are:

  • Easy integration of Google Analytics to work seamlessly with Turbolinks
  • Offering a choice for the database engine to be used
  • A more structured way to handle JavaScript/CoffeeScript
  • Different UI templates to choose from
  • Subtle standard Rails code changes such as the inclusion of /lib by default
  • And more!

Some features will also be removed. Among them, the RSpec & Capybara test frameworks. Much of the feedback I get concerns changes and tweaks to adapt to the individual way developers are implementing TDD/BDD. There are simply too many options to make the right choice so I decided to remove it completely. You will be able to add the testing suite of your choice yourself after your app is generated by RailsBricks.

Next step

While I’m cooking RailsBricks 3, you are welcome to submit your feedback, suggestions and feature requests. I don’t promise each feature will be implemented or even considered but I will read them carefully nonetheless.

Keep an eye on Twitter as this is where I’ll announce the release of RailsBricks 3.

RailsBricks 2.3.0 released
posted about 2 months ago

RailsBricks now builds apps using Rails 4.1.6. This release also includes:

  • Font Awesome updated to 4.2.0 (also adds font-awesome-sprockets in SCSS files)
  • Fixes a visual bug where checkboxes would not be properly aligned
  • Fixes a users seed bug introduced with release 2.2.0

If RailsBricks was made by Apple, they’d say that this is the best RailsBricks ever made!

RailsBricks 2.2.1 released
posted 2 months ago

Version 2.2.1 has been released and RailsBricks now uses Rails 4.1.5.