The Rails Envy guys, Gregg Pollack and Jason Seifer, are back with another of their "Envycast" screencasts: 45 minutes about Ruby on Rails 2.2, which is scheduled to be released realsoonnow. They were kind enough to send me a review copy (which means, yes, I didn't pay for it), and here are some impressions.

You certainly get enough for your money when you purchase their "Package Deal" for $16: the screencast itself in QuickTime, iPod/iPhone, and Ogg Theora formats, a 120-page PDF ebook by Carlos Brando in English and Portuguese, and a set of code samples (you can also buy the video or the ebook separately for $9 each).

Let's take the pieces one at a time. Unlike some other screencasts, the Rails Envy guys are using green-screen technology to insert themselves in front of the slides and code samples. This adds some action to what might otherwise be a pretty dry pile of information though (fortunately, I think) the cheesy jokes are not as non-stop as in their classic "Ruby on Rails vs.
" commercials. They pack a pretty good amount of information into the screencast, touching on dozens of new features in the time they have; in some areas, they're more comprehensive than the official release notes.

The PDF is even more comprehensive than the screencast; it covers a ton of stuff out of the changelogs, with code samples and explanations (in fact, it includes the changelogs as an appendix). If you want a complete overview of the changes coming down the pike for Rails 2.2, the PDF is the single best resource I've seen so far.

The code samples parallel the ebook; they're set up as a series of tests, so you can run rake against it (this will be useful as 2.2 proceeds from RC1 to release, to see what might have changed), or dig in to test cases to see the new functionality in action.

So, is it worth the money? Well, you could get all of this information elsewhere: the Rails changelogs and source code and git repository are all public. In theory, it's easy enough to look at the git logs going back from now to the 2.1 timeframe to see everything. But as someone who's done just that (to help compile the 2.2 release notes), I can tell you it's a non-trivial exercise. There's a lot of stuff in the commit log that doesn't make immediate sense, and there are older commits that have been changed by newer ones. This set of resources does all that work for you.

But, one caution: Rails 2.2 just reached the RC1 point, and while the code is mostly locked down, it's still changing. The odds are pretty good that some part of this material will be obsolete when Rails 2.2 actually ships - and while it should be easy enough for Rails Envy to update the code and ebook, I'm not sure what they'll do if there ends up being a bug in the screencast. Hopefully they have some plan for that.

If you're considering whether to upgrade to 2.2, these resources will give you an early look at how you stand to benefit (as well as listing which 2.1 bugs have been fixed). Personally, I think the video is overkill, but I'm not all that much of a screencast fan; I can scan and even read written material much faster. But the ebook is definitely a valuable addition to the written material on Rails, and at $9, it should be a trivial amount of money for any developer to spend to get up to speed.