Joyent Slingshot and Connector Go Open Source
Remember when we first announced Joyent Slingshot, the technology that lets you run Rails apps within a native Windows and OS X client, a few months ago? Well, both Slingshot and Joyent Connector have just been open sourced, and they're yours to play with now. For those unfamiliar with Slingshot, here's what Joyent have to say:
Joyent Slingshot allows developers to deploy Rails applications like a standard desktop application, which work online and offline (with synchronization), have drag and drop, and interact with all the other desktop applications.
With Joyent Slingshot:
* Create a hybrid Web/desktop application
* Synchronize online and offline data
* Use the same code for online and offline application(s)
* Deploy and update your application easily
* Drag into and out of application
Joyent Connector, a suite of collaboration and communication applications for small businesses, has also been open sourced. While not such a big deal as Slingshot, in my opinion, this is a significant move, on a par with, say, 37signals opensourcing BaseCamp (which I bet will never happen). If you want to see how a BIG Rails application is put together, check out the code.. there are about 60 models in there!
July 14, 2007 at 12:20 am
This is simply amazing!
July 14, 2007 at 2:25 am
I am currently exploring Rails combined with Flex for a richer web GUI. Does anyone know if this would be compatible with Slingshot?
July 14, 2007 at 2:42 am
Anyone know what the subversion repository URL is?
July 14, 2007 at 7:27 am
This is a really big new! I think is a breakdown in our paradigms, the new way of work with private projects. I work as consultant and Rails Developer but I don´t know What I could say if somebody ask me for my code, specially the code of my private "comercial" projects.
Awesome
July 14, 2007 at 12:46 pm
See http://svn.joyent.com/opensource/
July 14, 2007 at 12:52 pm
CG: I /think/ so, since at the client side Flex is all implemented by Flash, right? That way it'll only depend on if the user has Flash installed or not (as it already does).
July 14, 2007 at 6:34 pm
Hello Peter, as I don't know your e-mail yet I will post it here. I'm planning on using your Slingshot product to encapsulate my Rails app as a client stand-alone app. My problem was to deal with the current state of your sync process. Unfortunately I needed more control. So I took the liberty to start a separate open source project of my own called "acts_as_replica" (http://code.google.com/p/actsasreplica/). It is still lacking the rake tasks that are required to link with your GUI events for Up and Down.
I was wondering if you're not interested in talking about maybe merging both projects or at least helping me make it easier to integrate. Any collaboration would be great.
Best Regards
July 15, 2007 at 1:25 am
Slingshot is not my product, I'm just reporting that Joyent have open sourced it :) Joyent are at joyent.com. Good luck with your app though!
July 15, 2007 at 1:25 am
I just realize that the post might be confusing here. When I say "we announced Joyent Slingshot", I meant Ruby Inside posted about it previously ;-)
July 15, 2007 at 1:52 pm
I can't seem to find any examples that I can run on a Windows box. The only example in the Wiki is OSX/Intel. I also downloaded the Windows source but I looks like it's missing a lot stuff compared to the OSX branch. Has anybody else had any luck getting Slingshot to work on Windows?
Tom
July 16, 2007 at 3:31 am
Hi!
This is great news indeed, i have just a small issue taht maybe someone here can answer. Following the install instructions for Conector, i noticed that you need to install PostgreSQL in order to completely build the application. I love the idea of PostgreSQL but somehow there are several reports of issues with Mac OS X and aditionally I havent been able to find a propper Instalation Guide for Tiger ( 10.4.10 ). Some people have sugested installing through Fink or MacPorts, but i agree with the ideas exposed by Dan Benjamin in the Installation guide for Rails at Hivelogic (http://hivelogic.com/narrative/articles/ruby-rails-mongrel-mysql-osx). So, if anybody knows how to install PostgreSQL from source on Mac OS X 10.4.10 without breaking iChat Video and properly setting up the launchd task so the database does not need to autostart with the computer i will appreciate a note here.