{ |one, step, back| }

Running Back Versions of Gem-installed Applications

I keep forgetting that RubyGems has this capability. In this example, I have 7 (yes, seven, really) versions of rake installed.

  $ gem list --local rake

  *** LOCAL GEMS ***

  rake (0.4.15.1, 0.4.15, 0.4.14, 0.4.13, 0.4.12.1, 0.4.12, 0.4.4)
      Ruby based make-like utility.
  $
  $ rake --version
  rake, version 0.4.15.1
  $
  $ rake _0.4.12_ --version
  rake, version 0.4.12

Since rake is installed as a gem, you can run the executable of any installed version. By default, gems will run the latest one. But if you wish to run an older version, gems will accomodate you.

99 Gems on the Wall

GemWatch is reporting that 99 unique Gems have been released. We were at 90 at the beginning of the week and I was hoping that we could hit 100 by RubyConf. Looks like we might reach that goal during the conference!

If we hit 100 before my talk tomorrow, I will add a mention of that Gem to the presentation (how about that for motivation).

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RSS Feed for GemWatch Available

I’ve setup a simple RSS feed for newly released gems. The same file that builds the GemWatch HTML file now also builds an RSS 2.0 file. You can find the feed at http://onestepback.org/gemwatch.rss.

This is the first hand-built RSS feed I’ve put together, so let me know if I’ve screwed something up.

By the way, the idea from the feed came from the Dave's Article at the Pragmatic Automation web site

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50+ Gems Available

More than 50 packages have been released as a RubyGem at this point. I’ve added a Gem Watch sidebar to my blog so you can watch as the new gems become available.

If you are considering releasing your Ruby project as a gem, you might want to see this (or this if you are using Rake).

Anyone want to make a guess when we will hit 100 gems?

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RubyGems 0.7.0 has been Released

Updates to this site have been rather sporatic recently. Part of the reason is RubyGems version 0.7.0. I’ve been heavily involved with this version for the past few weeks and I’m happy to say it is available now in the expected locations (e.g. RubyForge).

The biggest change to RubyGems is the command structure. We now follow a cvs-like command structure where gem is the main command and install, build, etc are subcommands. For example, it install the latest version of rake, use the following command:

  gem install rake

Options are now defind on individual subcommands and the whole structure is much easier to learn and understand. In addition, the help system knows about individual commands and all the options for each command.

As you can guess, I’m quite excited about the latest version. I hope you download it and give it a tryout.

BTW, if you use Rake to build RubyGems, you will want to grab the latest version (rake-0.4.2) that supports rubygems-0.7.0.

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