Ruby on Rails 2.3 arrives

Ruby on Rails 2.3, the latest version of the popular open source Web development framework, is now available, according to the Rails Web site.

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A posting earlier this month revealed the release.

[ InfoWorld reported earlier this year about Ruby on Rails being on track for major upgrades. | How do Ruby IDEs compare? InfoWorld's Strategic Developer blogger Martin Heller finds out. ]

"Rails 2.3 is finally done and out the door. This is one of the most substantial upgrades to Rails in a very long time," according to a blog post on the Rails site.

Key features of version 2.3 include: templates, allowing a new skeleton Rails application to built with a developer's own default stack of configurations; engines, to share reusable application pieces; Rack, for accessing middleware; Metal, for writing optimized logic, and nested forms, to make complex forms easier.

The Rails team in May is expected to offer up an early version of Rails 3, which will serve as a merger of the Rails and Merb frameworks.

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Rails was the brainchild of developer David Heinemeier Hansson.

Paul Krill is an editor at large at InfoWorld, specializing in news and features related to application development, Java, and .Net. He can be reached at paul_krill@infoworld.com.