There has been a lot of response in the community about this gems idea we’ve been talking about. I even had the opportunity to sit down with Nick Quaranto, the guy behind Rubygems.org, over coffee Sunday and talk about where we think we are going and what it will take to get there.
One of the biggest things that everyone wants to see carrying this idea forward is that we migrate off of Rubygems.org and have our own gem server. And we all agree this is a great idea. There are just two things that really keep that from happening at the current moment. The devil is in the details and when we are ready to move off to our own server, it’s real money at that point (to do it right).
Right now we are embracing the idea of “one community,” and we are certainly not the first non-ruby community to use RubyGems.org. Long term a different host for the .net gems will be both necessary and beneficial. As we move off, we’ll be able to even expand some of the things we can do as far as checking gems as they are published to make sure they meet certain constraints.
If you are concerned about getting started versus later migrating – the process will be well thought out and seamless for the user experience of getting your gems and pushing them. The user experience is still going to be rock solid, and the same concept of gem install gemname is going to be there no matter what happens.
And for you gem owners – we’ll be working closely with Nick to ensure that the process is still rockstar.
The more community involvement there is from you and others like you, the faster we move to our own servers. And as far as when, well that all depends on you.