is gem still maintained?

[fmnoise]

64 open issues, last update more than 1.5 years ago
is gem still maintained?

[jonatack]

See: https://ernie.io/2013/11/17/anyone-interested-in-activerecord-hackery/

@bigxiang did a fantastic job bringing Rails 4 compatibility to Squeel. He appears to be less available now. Someone could step up 👍

[fmnoise]

@jonatack got that, thanks for quick response

[jonatack]

Looked at @bigxiang's GitHub profile and there is no activity at all for the past year. So unless he returns to open source on GitHub, I suppose it would be fair to venture that Squeel is not currently maintained.

[Schwad]

Similar conversation on #412 too. I upgraded to Rails 5 and migrated to Baby Squeel, which is much more actively maintained and now has a wiki on migrating from Squeel to Baby Squeel, works fine on my system now. https://github.com/rzane/baby_squeel
https://github.com/rzane/baby_squeel/wiki/Migrating-from-Squeel

I think this gem worked really, really well for us on 4.2.7, and if we didn't upgrade to 5.0.0 we could have kept using it no problem. If you're interested in a similar solution with maintenance and 5 compatibility, I haven't had problems with the switch.

[jonatack]

@Schwad @rzane I'm curious, why not just maintain Squeel? Seems like it would be a win for all of its current users.

Upgrading Squeel and Ransack to Rails 4 was a bit of a pain. But (at least for me with Ransack), upgrading the gem from Rails 4 to 5 has been pretty painless on the Active Record side and it seems that Sean Griffin (AR maintainer) is working to keep the API stable and even bring Arel back to public API in a stable way according the the latest BikeShed episode (http://bikeshed.fm/74).

[rzane]

@jonatack When I started writing Baby Squeel, I was actually attempting to write a really small subset of Squeel's features for a project I'm working on. I had no intention of it ever having any degree of compatability with Squeel. Then it kind of grew.

If I had known how far I was going to go with it, I probably would have just contributed to Squeel. This might sound crazy, but what if Baby Squeel just became the next major version of Squeel?

[Schwad]

It would be wonderful for the current users if Squeel were upgraded to handle Rails 5, and I support any efforts by the current maintainers to do so. It's a great gem, realistically, it would have been great if it had been brought into the core for us!

However we are executing our Rails 5 upgrade now, and the discussion in #412 led me to believe that, after seven months, we were still in the 'discussion' phase of maintaining this gem. Because of time constraints, the migration to @rzane's baby squeel was relatively painless and preserved our functionality... And with the recent inclusion of a wiki guide for former Squeel users relatively handy. I'll keep a branch of our application with the old syntax open if you want help in testing any future maintenance on the gem.

[jonatack]

I don't use Squeel (yet) otherwise would have stepped forth to maintain it, because (a) I like to know the dependencies I use, and (b) because I'm familiar with Polyamorous, which I work on occasionally for Ransack and which Squeel also depends on.

If @rzane or someone capable wanted to maintain Squeel I'm sure Ernie would be happy to let them run with it and see Squeel continue to help Rubyists going forward. I'd be happy to work with them for Polyamorous.

[ernie]

As mentioned previously, I'd be happy to have an active maintainer of the current Squeel codebase -- but would not be interested in a wholesale replacement of the codebase released under the same name and with an incompatible API.

[Schwad]

That's great to hear all around. I think @mckinnsb, @bmulholland expressed some interest in the mantle and @bigxiang as of a few months ago had indicated that maintenance from that end would still be a while. It seems @bmulholland put down a few commits on a branch on this March 8th. How is that branch doing? https://github.com/bmulholland/squeel/commits/master

[bmulholland]

@Schwad It turned out to be quite daunting, and well beyond both my current abilities and the time I have available. Our plan is to switch to baby_squeel in the coming months along with a Rails 5 upgrade.

[asia653]

@rzane I don't think that is a good idea. The whole point of squeel by the original developer was to maintain compatibility with AR in the hopes of it getting merged into core

[Schwad]

For those trying to upgrade to Rails 5 and stumble here, here's the guide to migrate to Baby Squeel: https://github.com/rzane/baby_squeel/wiki/Migrating-from-Squeel

[CodingAnarchy]

For anyone still using this and looking to update closer to a currently supported Rails, Baby Squeel also does not support anything above Rails 5.2.1. It might be worth keeping that in mind as you plan your way forward.

[fmnoise]

@CodingAnarchy I'd say you guys could mention this in readme to prevent such questions

[Schwad]

It would however appear that BabySqueel is actively working on a 5.2.1 solution if you want to take a look here and join in: rzane/baby_squeel#97

I filed a PR against Squeel 2.5 years ago that would mark this gem as unmaintained and gives information about the options out there (including a brave soul valiantly stepping up to maintain this gem).

#428