tags:

views:

238

answers:

3
+7  Q: 

Should I get gems from RubyForge, Github, or Gemcutter?

I'm confused about the world of Ruby Gems. There are several well-known repositories. Which is the right one, or does it matter?

I guess Gemcutter is the hip repository right now. They definitely have the nicest-looking website. Does that mean I should get my gems from there?

The main reason I'm asking is that I want to make sure I'm getting the latest release of the gem. If I don't specify the source, am I in danger of installing a crap version of the gem, or am I bugging?

Why is there more than one repository anyway?

+4  A: 

Go gemcutter. It's been publicized that gemcutter is going to become the new de facto. But, if you can't find the gem on gemcutter, you have to look at github or rubyforge. Hopefully most people will (if they haven't already) start moving towards gemcutter.

I think that's where "we" are at right now.

theIV  2009-11-05 23:56:55
+5  A: 

GitHub gem building is defunct -- it got disabled for an upgrade, and was never re-enabled because GemCutter is taking over that role. There are no new gems being generated on GitHub.

RubyForge is planning to phase phase out gem hosting too -- GemCutter will become the standard source for gems.

Edit: The whole migration plan is here

Ken Bloom  2009-11-06 01:56:21
So should I specify :source => http://gemcutter.org for all gems in environment.rb?
Ethan  2009-11-06 03:02:02
It looks like you'll eventually want to make `:source => rubygems.org`, but it's probably best to wait until late November before making any changes, and the current gems.rubyforge.org is being changed to point there anyway, so things should just work without any changes.
Ken Bloom  2009-11-06 04:54:44
GitHub's gem generation, by the way, was always a specialized service. It was intended to make it easy for individual developers to fetch their own customized Gem versions from gems.github.com, and for this reason every gem on GitHub had the developer's username prepended to the gem's name.
Ken Bloom  2009-11-06 20:12:23
You shouldn't have to specify any source. The default will always work no matter what URL you're using (gemcutter.org, gems.rubyforge.org, and soon, rubygems.org)
qrush  2010-02-09 05:35:06
A: 

Why is there more than one repository anyway?

Because you can run your very own gem server and install from that (some folks use it on large deployments to host their own gems).

Julik  2009-11-06 11:41:40

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