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

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 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 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)