Nugget

Nugget is a minimal gem structure for all those peeps that want to get a kickstart on creating a gem without having a development or test dependency on external tools like hoe, jeweller or the like.

"Out of the box", nugget will give you the basic directory structure for a gem file, with a gemspec and a spec suite to start testing.

Where you go from there is up to you :)

What Does it Do?

Nugget produces a directory tree that looks like this (for the gem super_awesome):

It does not install any gem requirements in your app to generate gemspecs or "manage" your gems.

Usage

You can run it directly from the code on github:

$ ruby -s <(curl -s https://raw.github.com/reInteractive/nugget/master/install.rb)

Or you can clone it to your local box and run it:

$ git clone git://github.com/reInteractive/nugget.git
$ ruby nugget/install.rb

You will be asked for the following:

• Gem name
• Your name
• Your email
• Git SSH read/write path for your gem

The gem name of your gem must be a valid ruby variable name, for example:

my_gem            # <= OK
supergem          # <= OK
Super Awesome Gem # <= not this, kittehs will die

The read write SSH git repository URL of your gem looks something like this:

[email protected]:mikel/nugget.git

Providing your name and your email allows us to populate your gemspec file correctly.

Nugget will then build a basic gem folder structure using RSpec for you and setup everything you need to start writing failing specs.

First Steps

Now that you have a gem directory, what should you do? I recommend this:

• Edit the README in your new gem and commit the changes, see README Driven Development by Tom Preston-Werner for more info. Once done, do the following:

$ git add README.md
$ git commit README.md -m "First commit"
$ git push origin master

• Modify the gemspec to update the description and summary info
• Commit and push the rest of the code:

$ git add .
$ git commit -m "Basic gem structure from nugget"
$ git push

Now you will have a basic library structure to start editing your gem with no external dependencies.

Writing a Gem

First things first,

Write your specs and write your code.

Once done, use the standard gem tools to deploy:

$ rake                # To run all your specs!
$ vi lib/<yourgem>/version.rb   # Edit to suit
$ git tag v0.0.1
$ git push
$ git push --tags
$ rake build          # Creates a gem file for you using the lastest version
$ rake release        # Releases your gem to rubygems

And you are done.

Todo List

• Turn nugget into an executable gem instead of a simple script to allow:

$ gem install nugget
$ nugget super_awesome

• Add specs to nugget
• Allow a flag to use test unit instead of rspec
• Allow a flag to generate a Rails 3 friendly gem

How to Contribute

As there is no test suite in place yet, feel free to fork and send me pull requests. Or help by writing some tests :)

License

Nugget is released under the MIT licenses. See the LICENSE.txt file. Copyright 2011 Mikel Lindsaar, RubyX.

Enjoy.