Ritual

Sweet, simple Rakefiles for your gem.

Picks up where Bundler leaves off, reducing the entire release ritual to a single command.

Example

For a plain ruby gem (no extensions), this is usually enough for your Rakefile:

require 'ritual'

To release a new patch version of your gem:

rake patch release

The release task just runs these tasks:

rake repo:bump    # Bump and commit the version file and changelog.
rake repo:tag     # Tag the release with the current version.
rake repo:push    # Push updates upstream.
rake gem:build    # Build the gem.
rake gem:push     # Push the gem to the gem server.

Select which component to bump with one of these:

rake patch        # Select a patch version bump.
rake minor        # Select a minor version bump.
rake major        # Select a major version bump.

For example:

  • rake patch release will bump 1.2.3 to 1.2.4 and release.
  • rake minor release will bump 1.2.3 to 1.3.0 and release.
  • rake major release will bump 1.2.3 to 2.0.0 and release.

"Release early, release often" has never been so easy!

Gemspec

You maintain the gemspec directly, rather than via a wrapper like Jeweler or Hoe.

Version File

The version file lives at lib/gem_name/version.rb (gem_name matches the name of the gemspec). It contains a line that looks like:

VERSION = [1, 2, 3]

When bumping the version, Ritual will only alter this line in the file. You may have any custom code around this line.

Changelog

The changelog lives at CHANGELOG. When bumping the version, it will look for a line like:

== LATEST

And replace it with the new version and current date:

== 1.2.3 2011-09-01

If it can't find this line, the version bump will fail. This prevents you from releasing without a changelog update.

Extensions

Use extension to define an extension-building task. Use one of two conventions.

Unnamed extensions

If you only need a single extension, say if you're simply wrapping a C library, then use an unnamed extension. In your Rakefile, do:

extension

This defines a task ext to build your extension. Source files live in ext/, and the extension is named after the gem.

So if the gem is my_gem, then Ritual configures your extension with ext/extconf.rb, runs make, and installs ext/my_gem.DLEXT to lib/my_gem/my_gem.DLEXT. (DLEXT is the shared library extension, which varies from system to system.) extconf.rb should contain:

create_makefile "my_gem"

And the extension entry point is Init_my_gem.

Named extensions

If you need more than one extension, you better name them. Do:

extension :my_ext

The task is named ext:my_ext. Source files live in ext/my_ext/. Ritual configures the extension with ext/my_ext/extconf.rb, and installs ext/my_ext/my_gem.DLEXT to lib/my_gem/my_ext.DLEXT. extconf.rb, should contain:

create_makefile "my_gem/my_ext"

And the extension entry point is Init_my_ext.

Customizing

Both extension calls above can take options:

  • :build_as - The path of the shared library that gets built.
  • :install_as - The path the shared library is installed to.

Both are relative to the Rakefile's directory, and should omit the shared library extension.

JRuby extensions

JRuby doesn't support extensions in the traditional sense (using mkmf). Instead, you typically build a .jar which is packaged into the gem.

To build a JRuby extension, pass :type => :jruby to extension. JRuby extensions can be named or unnamed, as above. All .java files are fed to javac simultanously to build the .jar, which is bundled into the gem by gem:build.

Note on Patches/Pull Requests

Copyright (c) George Ogata. See LICENSE for details.