Re: Google App Engine Rails Template

Hi Josh.

This is a helpful tool for creating a skeleton app. It starts from the opposite end of the process than I have been using - creating my Rails app and then warbling it and making those tweaks listed in your script. But with your script it seems the idea is to create the app elsewhere perhaps and then copy the Rails code into the app directory once the skeleton has been created with your script.

The biggest problem, which you alluded to in your blog post, still seems to be the need to restart the dev server between code changes. I believe this has to do with the fact that the Jetty server, which normally allows hot deploy for native Java projects, does not allow hot deploy when a scripting language like Ruby, Groovy or Python is running on top of Java. A potential solution to this is to use jetty-rails. As of yet I have not figured whether it is possible to get it to work with an App Engine Rails project: http://fabiokung.com/2008/05/14/jetty-rails-gem-simple-jruby-on-rails-development-with-servlet-containers/

The other adjustment with Rails development on App Engine has to do with the ORM but is still related to the hot deploy problem with Jetty. Datamapper and Ola Bini's Bumble seem to be the best solutions at the moment. But because of the need to restart the dev server between code changes, it seems to be more efficient to develop a Rails app first outside of the Eclipse/App Engine IDE using a real database and ORM and then later modify the app to work with Datamapper/Bumble. At least that's the approach I have decided to take at the moment. The Eclipse/App Engine environment slows me down too much to allow my development to proceed at a productive pace. I would be curious whether you have discovered any useful tips for the process of converting a regular app from ActiveRecord+Sqlite/Mysql to Datamapper/Bumble+Google Datastore.

Regards,
Chris