Tool parade scans your system for Ruby Gems and Rails plugins and uploads the result to a central server

This data is used for analysis on Working With Rails to generate public charts of the most active plugins and gems. You have full control over how and what data is submitted

Project Home page: toolparade.rubyforge.org (pending)

Why do this?

  • Share your installed gems/plugins with others. Get ideas of what libraries you might want to use based on others credentials.

  • Ensure that the authors of the plugin/gems get the credit they deserve.

  • Gem builders / plugin authors - see how many developers use your gem, which version etc.

  • Lowers the barrier for people to report what libraries they are using. It is potentially more informative than pure download stats.

  • Allows the system to make intelligent recommendations of plugins you may also be interested in / alternatives. (in the future)

Usage

Run this on your development machine only. It’s always best to set it to where you develop your Rails application. Scanning for plugins may take a very long time if you have a large number projects.

Standard operation:

toolparade

Help

toolparade help

Setup

toolparade setup

Config (views the config)

toolparade config

Debug

toolparade debug

Tips

Lets say you are working on a super top secret library and you don’t want this to be published. Just add it to the ignore section in your toolparade.yml config (usually located in your home directory):

Example:

ignore:
 gems: my_private_gem,CVS
 plugins: my_secret_project

If you know you don’t really use a plugin / gem also feel free to use ignore list.

Limitations

Removal of a gem or plugin is not currently reflected. You need to remove it using the web based interface if desired.

This is true in the case of ignore filters if the gem/plugin to ignore has already been registered in a previous scan.

Of course just because the plugin / gem is installed on your system is doesn’t mean you are using it all the time if at all. Currently this tool doesn’t make allowances for distinguishing this matter. There is however plenty of scope to improve the algorithms and scanning techniques in place. Feel free to drop me a line with suggestions.

History and credits

For some time I’ve been toying with the idea of incorporating some kind of plugin/gem stats functionality into Working With Rails. I had a feature branch I’ve been developing since January that did a basic scan of plugins (albeit crudely). I also had suggestions from other members of the community to do something similar so this spurred me on.

However I hadn’t previously released this for fear of diluting the current people based focus of WWR. I’m not looking to turn it into a replacement plugin /gem directory as we already have places for that.

Some folks to thank:

Johannes de Jong - Shows us your gems! suggestion workingwithrails.com/person/7426-johannes-de-jong

and Mike Clark (for starting the topic) clarkware.com/cgi/blosxom/2007/02/10#GemSurvey

Jeremy Kemper (Rails core team) - gem stats idea (pending further implementation) workingwithrails.com/person/5323-jeremy-kemper

Suggestions / Improvements

This kind of thing ultimately only works if people use it. So it’s up to you give it a try and spread the word.

Feel free to drop me a mail: mtsbtt @ googlemail.com or submit patches.

I’m always open to suggestions and quick to implement when I get time.

About the Author

Martin Sadler currently works for DSC a web consulting, hosting, web development and design firm based in London, UK.

He runs a blog at:

and also kick started and maintains the Working With Rails community site: