Camping is practically dead, and it's a shame!

[activestylus]

I read a post by Magnus that almost inspired me to use camping. Almost.

As someone who is desperately looking for a lightweight alternative to Rails, I first turned to Sinatra. Very capable little framework with a huge community. There was just one problem - I can't stand the controllers and all those route blocks. I wanted a controller that was more OO, more Rubyish in the purest sense. This is where Magnus struck a chord with me.

He went on to gush about Camping's small and devoted community:

Camping definitely has a great community too. Size doesn't always matter. Because there are so few users, it means every single issue gets full attention.

This is where he started to lose me. For starters you guys have open issues here from two years ago - many of them trailing off with unanswered questions. Secondly, yall are using the shittiest mailing list in the history of software. I mean seriously.. rubyforge mailman? Are we in the 21st century yet? I can't browse the archives without wanting to rip my eyeballs out with rusty pliers. Even google groups are a step up (and that's saying a lot).

Another huge weakness is public relations. It's great that Camping is trying to be different and goes against the grain of the mainstream. But I think this idea has been taken too far. There simply is not enough press or engagement to really expand its sphere of influence in a meaningful way. No announcements of major updates. No blog posts. Either you're in the know, or.. fuck you. It's bad enough the name of the framework is common and hard to google, but this bad bit of SEO is exacerbated by a prevailing recluse mentality.

And it's a damn shame because this is a great little framework! With very few exceptions (exception handling being one of them) it got so many things right. I suppose that is why I'm even bothering to write this issue. Maybe it will light a fire under someone's ass to remedy the situation. Given the track record, I am not betting the farm on it though.

I do wish you guys the best of luck with this project, and hope that it will someday get the attention it deserves.

[gurugeek]

Hello, I really think that this is non-issue. Camping is and was not meant to be mainstream. I did think the way you do when I started looking at camping (and I even offer some camping free hosting at http://1.ai) but the reality is that the majority of Ruby stuff is gravitating, for obvious reasons, around Rails and to a lesser degree Sinatra. That is the mainstream. I think that Magnus did an outstanding job in keeping camping alive and consistent to the true project started by why.

I don't think that the mailing list is bad at all. It uses the good old email system used by so many projects. Is Sinatra on google groups really better? I don't like it at all.

Many of the open issues are non critical but you can certainly help if you want. I think your assumption is that camping maintainers have an interested in expand the "sphere of influence" but, while I can't speak for them, I am glad they don't.

I use camping in production in several important projects so what I don't want is to end up with deprecated stuff (like in rails) or to follow the latest trend just to look wow. Consistency and reliability is what counts.

There is no recluse mentality but the honest truth is that there are many ruby frameworks (micro or not e.g. Cuba, Nyny, Sinatra, Ramaze you name it) and I don't think the world is going to think about Camping (or any ruby micro framework) as something with a huge influence in the World.

Camping is for these that are different and, perhaps rightly so, not for everyone David

[activestylus]

Thank you for the thoughtful reply, David. In some ways my rant above was really just me poking a stick at something to see if it's alive, and you've done a great job demonstrating this to be the case.

I see where you are coming from, and agree that Camping doesn't belong anywhere near the same arena as Rails, nor should it appeal to everyone's tastes. I do believe that the community could become a tad more robust with just the tiniest extra push to keep the public in the loop. Setting up a blog was a step in the right direction, though the fact that the last entry was in August (of what year??) shows that either (a) not much is going on with the framework itself or (b) there is a lot going on but it's happening behind closed doors.

I do think you are wrong about Camping's potential influence. You speak of microframeworks - I have played with them all, and with the exception of Raptor, Camping is the only one that respects SRP at the controller level. Everyone else is trying to be Sinatra with those confounded blocks! It's also pretty damn performant in my own (admittedly contrived) benchmarks, barely adding any overhead at all to Rack.

Perhaps I am just a sucker for underdogs with potential - I want to see more people enjoying and contributing to this kickass framework. It is reassuring to see that the few of you that are in the mix are passionate and productive with it.

On a related note, I am curious what types of apps you are running in production. That's another void waiting to be filled right there - I'm surprised there is not a "Camping in the Wild" section on the main site. The title practically writes itself!

[gurugeek]

Thank you for your reply. Once upon a time I had many idea e.g. to sponsor a programming contest for the best camping app. With some cool prizes may be a number of people would participate? What do you think ?

Re: the blog. I was personally against having an official blog on tumblr. To me if you promote the library you need it running on camping. If someone is interested I can sponsor the server etc. but I think the number of users is limited. I would be willing to help but again the current status of camping is maintenance and I agree that we shouldn't have too many changes.

Someone with time could do some forks using different ORM e.g. camping and couchdb or camping with sequel and no activerecord.....

I love underdogs too and there was a list of camping in the wild links somewhere ;)

I run camping in production in website with over 100,000 unique visitors a month. The real challenge and truth is that there are a lot of limits not from camping but the ruby http servers so unless you build something custom like github OR run passenger (as we do) you will find a lot of issues with thin and even puma. It could be because the app we use has a lot of I/O operations (clound db on amazon) but we did manage to make it work very well with passenger.

At any rate I am more than willing to help (time permitting) to whatever is needed :)

[DaveEveritt]

thanks for poking stick at this community :)

Here's the little Camping app I used to store Camping-related links I
collected some time back: http://ruby-camping-links.1.ai/

Many of those links are pre-version 2, and some may be dead, but they
show the range of the community's activities and interests, and may be
of use to you.

As for the mailing list, I use the mail-archive site, which has a
better interface: http://www.mail-archive.com/camping-list@rubyforge.org/

If you want to contribute, you'd be more than welcome. There may be
long periods of silence, but there are also period flurries of
activity. And although none of us is ambitious about wanting to see
Camping in the mainstream lights, we wouldn't complain if it got more
of the attention it deserves.

DaveE

...poking a stick at something to see if it's alive

...just the tiniest extra push to keep the public in the loop

...Camping is the only one that respects SRP at the controller
level. Everyone else is trying to be Sinatra

LOL

...It's also pretty damn performant

...underdogs with potential - I want to see more people enjoying and
contributing to this kickass framework.

...what types of apps you are running in production. That's another
void waiting to be filled right there - I'm surprised there is not a
"Camping in the Wild" section...

[activestylus]

Thanks for those links Dave, especially the one for the mailing list. HUGE improvement.

Your page of camping links is pretty sweet, though it seems a pity that so many of the great libs can't be used with v2. Both picnic and sleepingbag look like worthy additions to the Camping ecosystem - I wonder why they were never maintained.

I'm actually still on the fence with Camping. While I cannot find a suitable competitor, I find that Rack itself is not that hard to work with, and it's not even a big deal to roll your own micro framework. Case in point: http://svs.io/post/59495114366/roll-your-own-web-framework-in-half-an-hour

@gurugeek A contest might not be a bad idea

In the meantime I am closing this thread. You guys definitely don't need yet another open issue on my behalf

[DaveEveritt]

@activestylus - final note: many of us were inspired by _why's legacy, which is how camping got to be maintained. Also, some pre-v2 projects probably wouldn't need a whole load of work to fix for the current version of Camping. Anyway, use the (nice version of the) mailing list to let us know which direction you choose :)

[activestylus]

Thanks a lot Dave, I really do appreciate the feedback. _why's poignant guide was how I got into programming, so I can appreciate that sentiment.

One last Q - is there a change log where I can see what changed in version 2?

[DaveEveritt]

Yeah, the poignant guide was one of those moments that changed things for a lot of us :-) Magnus can probably help with the changelog for 2.0 (https://github.com/camping/camping/releases/tag/2.0) but the original Camping 2.0 announcement on the list should help:http://www.mail-archive.com/camping-list%40rubyforge.org/msg01014.html There's also this little snippet: http://camping.io/api/book/51_upgrading.html

Thanks a lot Dave, I really do appreciate the feedback. _why's

poignant guide was how I got into programming, so I can appreciate that sentiment.

One last Q - is there a change log where I can see what changed in

version 2?

Email sent using Kcom WebMail - Email, Groupware and Calendaring done right.

[judofyr]

You can also check out the CHANGELOG: https://github.com/camping/camping/blob/master/CHANGELOG

[activestylus]

Thanks judofyr

I see it's been 4 years since the last update. My guess is that there probably is not much more to add to the framework itself as it seems pretty baked to me. Just curious if there are any more updates on the roadmap

ps - Excellent job keeping the project afloat

[uranio-235]

the only one things that stuck a lot camping now, is the ActiveRecord's Changes. Latest rubies with latest AR always broke camping after a upgrade...