Bueller: A Tool for Crafting Gems Along With Bundler

Bueller provides two things:

  • A generator for creating/kickstarting a new project
  • Rake tasks for managing gems and versioning of a GitHub project

Installing

Install the gem:

gem install bueller

Using in an existing project

Since bueller uses your existing gemspec, simply add the bueller tasks to your Rakefile:

begin
  require 'bueller'
  Bueller::Tasks.new
rescue LoadError
  puts "Bueller not available. Install it with: gem install bueller"
end

Using to start 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 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 0.0.0. 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 specify BUILD=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 handles releasing your gem into the wild:

rake release

It does the following for you:

  • git pushes to origin/master branch
  • git tags the version and pushes to the origin remote

As is though, it doesn't actually get your gem anywhere. To do that, you'll need to use rubyforge or gemcutter.

Releasing to Rubygems

Bueller can also handle releasing to Rubygems. You must create an account on Rubygems before doing any Rubygems releases with Bueller.

After you have configured this, rake release will now also release to Gemcutter.

If you need to release it without the rest of the release task, you can run:

$ rake rubygems:release

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 port)