Gem

RubyGems is the Ruby standard for publishing and managing third party libraries.

For user documentation, see:

• gem help and gem help [command]

• RubyGems User Guide

• Frequently Asked Questions

For gem developer documentation see:

• Creating Gems

• Gem::Specification

• Gem::Version for version dependency notes

Further RubyGems documentation can be found at:

• RubyGems Guides

• RubyGems API (also available from gem server)

RubyGems Plugins

RubyGems will load plugins in the latest version of each installed gem or $LOAD_PATH. Plugins must be named ‘rubygems_plugin’ (.rb, .so, etc) and placed at the root of your gem’s require_path. Plugins are installed at a special location and loaded on boot.

For an example plugin, see the Graph gem which adds a ‘gem graph` command.

RubyGems Defaults, Packaging

RubyGems defaults are stored in lib/rubygems/defaults.rb. If you’re packaging RubyGems or implementing Ruby you can change RubyGems’ defaults.

For RubyGems packagers, provide lib/rubygems/defaults/operating_system.rb and override any defaults from lib/rubygems/defaults.rb.

For Ruby implementers, provide lib/rubygems/defaults/#{RUBY_ENGINE}.rb and override any defaults from lib/rubygems/defaults.rb.

If you need RubyGems to perform extra work on install or uninstall, your defaults override file can set pre/post install and uninstall hooks. See Gem::pre_install, Gem::pre_uninstall, Gem::post_install, Gem::post_uninstall.

Bugs

You can submit bugs to the RubyGems bug tracker on GitHub

Credits

RubyGems is currently maintained by Eric Hodel.

RubyGems was originally developed at RubyConf 2003 by:

• Rich Kilmer – rich(at)infoether.com

• Chad Fowler – chad(at)chadfowler.com

• David Black – dblack(at)wobblini.net

• Paul Brannan – paul(at)atdesk.com

• Jim Weirich – jim(at)weirichhouse.org

Contributors:

• Gavin Sinclair – gsinclair(at)soyabean.com.au

• George Marrows – george.marrows(at)ntlworld.com

• Dick Davies – rasputnik(at)hellooperator.net

• Mauricio Fernandez – batsman.geo(at)yahoo.com

• Simon Strandgaard – neoneye(at)adslhome.dk

• Dave Glasser – glasser(at)mit.edu

• Paul Duncan – pabs(at)pablotron.org

• Ville Aine – vaine(at)cs.helsinki.fi

• Eric Hodel – drbrain(at)segment7.net

• Daniel Berger – djberg96(at)gmail.com

• Phil Hagelberg – technomancy(at)gmail.com

• Ryan Davis – ryand-ruby(at)zenspider.com

• Evan Phoenix – evan(at)fallingsnow.net

• Steve Klabnik – steve(at)steveklabnik.com

(If your name is missing, PLEASE let us know!)

License

See LICENSE.txt for permissions.

Thanks!

-The RubyGems Team