cl-migrations is go!
Sunday, November 12th, 2006Finally, after a little more than a week’s fiddling during my free time, my first (hopefully) useful contribution to the CL community has been released. It’s called cl-migrations, a simple tool to manage database changes, ported from the popular web framework Ruby on Rails. It’s also my attempt to do some real-world programming with lisp.
The idea started when I wanted to do a simple web application to just check out how it is to build a non-trivial webapp in common lisp. Turns out, most of the pieces are already there: Emacs, SLIME, SBCL, CLSQL, TBNL (Now Hunchentoot) – you name it. I’m particularly impressed with CLSQL – though it does not have the gee-whiz features of something like ActiveRecord, it certainly does it’s job well, including creating CL objects out of database records.
But the migrations feature is missing, one of my favorite features in Rails. I thought, hey, it might be a good opportunity to release my first serious foss contribution. Admittedly, it’s very simple tool and no great shakes, but I think it’s a vital piece that makes web development in CL much easier. I hope to release whatever tools I can during the building of my web app. Yes, it’s true – Common Lisp is like crack – you start hacking on it, there’s no turning back 
If only somebody sends me there in return for some interviews and good reporting of the event… sigh. Anyways, if you’re attending BarCamp Chennai, See you there!