There are several recommended ways to create the empty gem project.
For rails engines: it's best to update to the latest version of rails and generate it via rails (See http://guides.rubyonrails.org/engines.html). For regular rubygems, I recommend using either:
- the bundler skeleton
gem update bundler; bundle gem my_gem_name(note: you'll need to add rake as a development dependency) - Using my own gem template, which I've just updated (See https://github.com/jeremyolliver/gem_template)
- your_gem.gemspec defines dependencies and other details about the ruby gem
- By default rubygems will
require "lib/your_gem". All code should be in there, and other files inlib/your_gem/*need requiring manually from lib/your_gem - Write tests :)
- When testing your gem in progress with another project that will use it, in that project specify in Gemfile
gem "your_gem", :path => "../path/to/your_gem/" - Remember to fill in the Readme with what the aim of the project is for, and ideally basic usage too
Most ruby files should use snake_case and CamelCase conventions. Dashes should be avoided in most cases, the convention for when they should be used is when extending an existing namespace. Examples here include "rack-cache" extending the existing "rack" gem. In that case, an extended namespace of Rack::Cache is implied, which lends itself to code organisation such as "lib/rack/cache/*" though rubygems will still look to require the file "lib/rack-cache". It's nice to create the file "rack-cache", which requires the more idiomatic named files (slashes for namespace separation instead of dashes), without it, users will have to specify the file to require: gem "rack-cache", :require => "rack/cache".
Some of our gems follow a namespace convention with "easy-" Easy:: namespace in this fashion. If creating more like this, don't forget "lib/easy-gemname" to require "lib/easy/gemname" etc. (Example: https://github.com/AbleTech/easy-deployment/blob/master/lib/easy-deployment.rb)