Making My First Ruby Gem

I just published my first ruby “gem.” It’s a “gemified” version of the column width generator module, now available on rubygems.org:

https://rubygems.org/gems/generate-column-widths

And here’s the github page:

https://github.com/liantics/generate-column-widths

A ruby gem is a kind of plugin for ruby apps. You post your gem to a hosting site from which others can get the code, plug it into their app, and use it, without having to completely embed it into their own code (which reduces maintenance hassles for others if you make a change to the gem later).

I did a bunch of looking around yesterday, to figure out how to build a ruby gem. The process is pretty simple. It’s worth a try if you’ve got a chunk of code that solves a problem you think other people are likely also trying to solve.

quickleft has a great writeup, and an associated video, to walk you through the process:

http://quickleft.com/blog/engineering-lunch-series-step-by-step-guide-to-building-your-first-ruby-gem

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