Orbit v0.3.0 released

May 10, 2024

Do you like Elixir? Phoenix? How about Gemini? If you're within this tiny overlap of interests, then today you're in luck.

Introducing Orbit, the Phoenix of Gemini.

v0.3.0 is out today. It's really coming together. I've tried to take the latest "lessons learned" from Phoenix and adopt them to Orbit to make it nearly a one-to-one mapping of understanding.

Some thoughts

A few things have been simplified. I opted to give the app's Endpoint module the dual functionality of serving up the TLS endpoint while also routing requests. Technically, the router could still be split off into a separate module by the developer. But as it stands, the Endpoint is mostly empty, so it might as well get double duty.

I am not 100% sold on the mixing of controller and view modules in the same directory. I get it – they are tightly coupled. Maybe Rails' MVC prescription is too engrained, but I feel like views should have their own home.

I opted to include every status code as individual functions on `Orbit.Request`, instead of only a single `put_status/3` function. Autocomplete makes it much easier to discover the available statuses if they are plain functions.

I just discovered `mix test --cover`, and it's been a godsend. I don't know when this was introduced into Elixir (or Erlang?), but it's so nice not to pull in Coveralls or whatever. Orbit is at 89% coverage – higher soon.

One of the big remaining TODOs is code reloading. I looked at `Phoenix.CodeReloader`, but it's really complicated. I am also trying out the exsync package, which is working well. Maybe I should just roll that in as a dev dependency.

Next steps

Anyway, I am extremely happy with the current state of Orbit's API. I am intentionally targeting v1.0 with a small surface area, so that inevtiable future enhancements still abide by semver. The current `mix orbit.init` is simple and complete enough to get folks started – without me having to build out really complex generator functionality.

Gemini is simple. Its framework should be, too.

With today's release, Orbit becomes capable enough to start building real applications against it.