How do I create a ruby gem?

Background

Last week, I pulled a file out of my lib directory of a project because I thought that we might try and use it in another project. I really want to prevent a copy paste situation. So this led me to think about, how did I do this 8 months ago?

0. Before You Start

• Create a RubyGems.org account
• Make sure to query the name of your gem, to see if it already exists

1. gem install bundler

Bundler will do most of the heavy lifting. Pick a name for your gem and run…

bundle gem my_gem

Now you should have a directory with your gem name and it contains all of the necessary file needed to start your gem.

2. Build Time

If you run ‘rake -T’ in the terminal, you will see…

rake build # Build my_gem-0.0.1.gem into the pkg directory
rake install # Build and install my_gem-0.0.1.gem into system gems
rake release # Create tag v0.0.1 and build and push my_gem-0.0.1.gem to Rubygems

Run these commands:

• rake build #to build your gem
• rake install #just to make sure your gem installs without issue

3. Release my_gem

When the gem is ready for release to RubyGems.org

rake release

The first time you do this, you will be asked for your RubyGems.org credentials.

Done