SubSonic 3.0 is Released

Friday, July 03, 2009 -

At some point you need to stop polishing and let it go already – so I did just that today: SubSonic 3.0 is released. This thing took me just about a year to finish up, and a lot of work has gone into it.

So, what’s new? Well…

• A nice Linq engine which parses IQueryable “stuff” into SQL (thanks to Matt Warren’s excellent work with the IQToolkit, which we stole mercilessly).
• A templating system which allows you to use ActiveRecord, good old Linq in Linq to SQL style, or whatever floats your boat.
• A SimpleRepository which is just about zero-drag and even builds your database for you
• A brand-new project site that will hopefully answer the question “is SubSonic dead”? Or probably not
• A new docs site that has permanently crushed my ability to type. It’s a wiki so if you feel like being helpful and like SubSonic and want to help… nudge… nudge

Should You Care?
That’s a tough question – so it’s the first I’ll address.

• If you like Linq and you’re not working with SQL Server and EF is a bit much for you – yes.
• If you like Linq and you are working with SQL Server… well nobody ever got fired for using Microsoft :) so “maybe”. Linq to SQL is awesome and it’s not dead :).
• If you like a “low-friction” approach from a helper framework – then yes. You can’t get much lower-friction then SimpleRepository.
• If you like SubSonic to begin with, then yes. There’s still the same grooviness here.

Should You Be Afraid?
Hopefully not - I've really tried to test the tar out of this thing before letting it go (that's why this took me so long). I've had a lot of help with this (many thanks to Eric, Paul, George Capnias, and Jim Zimmerman) and a lot folks reporting bugs (and a TON) of patches so hopefully it's solid. That said - this is a major release and it's also Open Source. You will need to be a bit flexible and hopefully you won't mind helping us out. Which brings me to my final point...

Our Repo Has Moved. Yes, Again
All was going very well until 3 things happened:

1. I needed to put the 3.0 repo together with the 2.0 repo. It’s not a branch – it’s its own repo for sure. 2.2 is not a “tag” so… what to do? The only thing to do is to have the trunk split into versions which is ALL kinds of messy. I needed another repo for my project, and Google doesn’t let you do that.
2. I needed a really cool, collaborative system for our template sharing, which also should have its own repo.
3. Google SVN began to crumble and crash on me, causing me to drop/reload every week or so.

I’ve been using GitHub for a while and I absolutely LOVE it (more on that later) so with this release, we’ve moved to GitHub. I’ve kept the Google site open so we can work on existing issues, etc but I’ll be closing it in the coming month or so.

The Goods

• The new project site is here
• The new docs site is here
• The new Source site is here.

I’m going to go have a beer or five and then go blow stuff up for the 4th like a good Amrrrcan.