Lightrail is a minimalist Rails 3 stack for apps that serve primarily APIs, with a particular focus on JSON APIs. This makes Lightrail an ideal Rails backend for client-heavy HTML5/JS applications, particularly single-page applications written in frameworks like Backbone.js, Ember.js, and Spine.

simplest_auth is a gem to be used with Rails applications where RESTful Authentication is overkill – it handles authentication and nothing else (e.g. password resets, etc…)

A Braintree fake so that you can avoid hitting Braintree servers in tests

General ruby templating with json, bson, xml, plist and msgpack support

Simple, efficient message processing for your Rails 3 application.

Synchronises Assets between Rails and S3.

Asset Sync is built to run with the new Rails Asset Pipeline feature introduced in Rails 3.1. After you run bundle exec rake assets:precompile your assets will be synchronised to your S3 bucket, optionally deleting unused files and only uploading the files it needs to.

ActiveRecord like functionalities for reading from YAML with a simple class implementation

This is a comprehensive guide to upgrading a Ruby on Rails 3 application to Rails 3.1. It also includes instructions for updating the compass gem. Lets get started!

One little known secret is that Rails 3 allows you to define your own configuration elements trivially.