Bueller: A Tool for Crafting Gems Along With Bundler
Bueller provides two things:
- A generator for creating a new gem
- Rake tasks for managing and versioning gems
Quick Links
Installing
Install the gem:
gem install bueller
Integrate into an existing project
Since Bueller uses your existing gemspec, simply add the Bueller tasks to your Rakefile:
require 'bueller'
Bueller::Tasks.new
Bueller follow's Bundler's convention of storing the version number in a constant. In lib/<gem_name>/version.rb
, you need the following code:
module MyGem
VERSION = '1.2.3'
end
With that, you're all set to start buelling!
Starting a new project
Bueller provides a generator. It requires you to setup your name and email for git and your username and token for GitHub.
bueller the-perfect-gem
This will prepare a project in the 'the-perfect-gem' directory, setup to use Bueller.
It supports a number of options. Here's a taste, but bueller --help
will give you the most up-to-date listing:
- --create-repo: in addition to preparing a project, it create an repo up on GitHub and enable RubyGem generation
- --rspec: generate spec_helper.rb and spec ready for rspec (this is the default TDD framework)
- --testunit: generate test_helper.rb and test ready for test/unit
- --minitest: generate test_helper.rb and test ready for minitest
- --shoulda: generate test_helper.rb and test ready for shoulda
- --bacon: generate spec_helper.rb and spec ready for bacon
- --gemcutter: setup releasing to gemcutter
- --rubyforge: setup releasing to rubyforge
Default options
Bueller respects the BUELLER_OPTS environment variable. Want to always use Test::Unit, and you're using bash? Add this to ~/.bashrc:
export BUELLER_OPTS="--testunit"
Gemspec
Bueller leaves the task of defining a clean gemspec to you. However, it does offer a method to bump version numbers via rake tasks.
rake version:bump:minor
When starting from scratch, bueller will create a skeleton gemspec for you.
Gem
Bueller gives you tasks (provided by Bundler) for building and installing your gem.
rake install
To build the gem (which will end up in pkg
), run:
rake build
To install the gem (and build if necessary), i.e. using gem install, run:
rake install
Note, this does not use sudo
to install it, so if your ruby setup needs that, you should prefix it with sudo:
sudo rake install
Versioning
Bueller tracks the version of your project. It assumes you will be using a version in the format x.y.z
. x
is the 'major' version, y
is the 'minor' version, and z
is the patch version.
Initially, your project starts out at 0.0.1. Bueller provides Rake tasks for bumping the version:
rake version:bump:major
rake version:bump:minor
rake version:bump:patch
Prerelease versioning
Major, minor, and patch versions have a distant cousin: build. You can use this to add an arbitrary (or you know, regular type) version. This is particularly useful for prereleases.
You have two ways of doing this:
- Use
version:write
and specifyBUILD=pre1
Bueller does not provide a version:bump:build
because the build version can really be anything, so it's hard to know what should be the next bump.
Releasing
Bueller uses Bundler's rake tasks for your gem into the wild:
rake release
It does the following for you:
- git tags the version and pushes to origin/master
- builds the gem
- pushes the gem to RubyGems
Development and Release Workflow
- Hack, commit, hack, commit, etc, etc
-
rake version:bump:patch release
to do the actual version bump and release - Have a delicious beverage (I suggest a local craft brew)