Production-Ready Dockerfile about shinycms

[wbraswell]

@denny
Thanks for the insight. I'm sorry that your job doesn't use Perl! I plan to continue using ShinyCMS (Perl) for the time being.

[wbraswell]

I am already planning to work on this, so I am happy to contribute.

[wbraswell]

@denny
I see you have decided to re-write ShinyCMS using Ruby instead of Perl.
https://github.com/denny/ShinyCMS-ruby

Since you have changed both ShinyCMS.org and ShinyCMS.com to advertise Ruby instead of Perl, am I correct in my assumption that you no longer plan to continue active development or major upgrades to the original Perl version?

[denny]

The Ruby version is my current focus (mostly because what I'm learning from that project feeds into my current day job), but the Perl version still has more real-world users - some of whom even pay me for support! - so it's got a safe medium-term future at the very least 🙂

Once I get the Ruby version to feature parity, then I'll be looking at porting some new features from that version back to this one. In the meantime I'm probably only fixing bugs here myself, not adding new code, but I'm happy to review contributions from other people.

[wbraswell]

It is confusing to have 2 CMS systems, written by the same person, both with the same name "ShinyCMS".
It is also confusing to have all the public-facing references to "ShinyCMS" state that it is written in Ruby.
Have you considered using a new different name for the Ruby software, or at least a different web URL?

[denny]

The website stuff is a work in progress - it pointed to the Perl one until a few weeks ago (I changed it on the first anniversary of the Ruby project), but the intention is to have it point to both eventually.

[wbraswell]

This may seem like a silly question, but why are you creating 2 identically-named systems in 2 different languages? What is your reasoning and what are the benefits?

[denny]

This blog post touches on some of this stuff - http://shinycms.org/blog/2019/10/the-perl-version - tl,dr the Ruby version started out as a professional development project for me, although if anybody else finds it useful then of course I'll be pleased to see that, just as I've been pleased to see a few people have found the Perl version useful over the years.

So far the two versions are (intentionally) very similar in design and architecture - the main purpose of the Ruby version is for me to become a better Ruby developer, not to redesign the CMS.

Places where the Ruby version differs so far can be broken into three main categories:
(1) benefits of hindsight and 'fresh start' consistency wins
(2) I'm a better developer now than a decade ago, so sometimes I can see better ways of doing things
(3) sometimes Ruby offers a way to solve a problem that Perl doesn't (or didn't a decade ago)

Category 1 is incredibly common but mostly leads to quite minor differences, category 2 is less common but often more interesting. Category 3 is very rare, I can only think of one or two instances so far.

In the medium term, I intend to apply what I've learned building the Ruby version back into a refresh of the Perl version, at least for categories 1 and 2, and no doubt I'll have a good hunt for newer stuff on CPAN that might match anything in category 3.