Gem Hosting

Gem Hosting is confusing.  There is a lot of conflicting information out there and it is very hard to tell what is the "right thing" to do.  I use GitHub by default for my projects as I can keep them private and GitHub focuses on version control.  When I'm working in Ruby, there are things I'd like to contribute to the community as a gem.  What is the "right way" to do this?

I looked at various sites as they had mentions when Google'd:

• GitHub
• RubyForge
• RubyGems

GitHub is no longer building gems (whatever that means exactly) so they are out of the running.  There is no obvious way to mark your repository as being a Ruby Gem so other can find it.

RubyGems.org sounded like they had an easier to use interface.  However, parts of the site haven't been updated in a while and the single-signon with a RubyForge didn't work.

That left RubyForge which is the default hosting site for "gem install".  Account creation worked and the blogs/forums look current.  I do like having the projects moderated and approved.  RubyForge it is!

I filled a project request for my C++/Rice documentation tool.  That got approved on a Sunday morning in about 10 minutes.

There are a couple of next steps for me.  I will be keeping my project on GitHub and publishing to RubyForge.  This is akin to using Heroku for application hosting.

To do:

• Making the gem/package structure standards-compliant
• Figure out how to push to RubyForge
• Public documentation