Modularizing Rails applications

Question

I'm looking for a way to modularize Rails applications. As I've seen there is no built-in way of accomplishing it. I've found different plugins/core hacks but I feel untrusted about the way they work and their maturity.

Do you have any experience on this?

So far I found this ones:

• Desert: http://github.com/pivotal/desert
• Rails engines: http://rails-engines.org/

Answer 1

Rails engines are part of the current stable rails 2.X and so aren't really "hacks" anymore. They seem like a good fit if you want to add fairly course-grained application functionality to an application - a good example might be adding a blog or CMS-style functionality to another application. Checkout the railscast on engines here: http://railscasts.com/episodes/149-rails-engines

If you're looking to modularize on the front end - more "widget" style, you might want to look at cells: http://github.com/apotonick/cells/