How to create a Ruby gem with Bundler

Bundler is a tool created by Carl Lerche, Yehuda Katz, André Arko and various superb contributors for managing Rubygems dependencies in Ruby libraries. Bundler 1.0 was released around the same time as Rails 3 and it’s the Rails project where Bundler is probably most well-known usage occurs. But remember, Bundler isn’t just for Rails!

Did you know that you can use Bundler for not only gem dependency management but also for writing our own gems? It’s really easy to do this and Bundler provides a couple of things to help you along this path.

Related reading:

• Creating a gem with a C extension
• Common practices for developing gems

But first, why?

Why should we create a gem? Can’t we just throw in some code into our other library and use that instead? Sure, we can do that. But then what if we want to use the code elsewhere, or we want to share it? This is why a gem is perfect. We can code our library and gem separately from each other and just have the library require the gem. If we want to use the gem in another library, then it’s just a tiny modification rather than a whole slew of copying.

Also: Sharing is caring.

Getting Started

This guide was made using version 1.9.0 of bundler. We can follow along with other versions, but we might not get the exact same output. To check which version of bundler we currently have, lets run the following command:

$ bundle -v

We should see something close to Bundler version 1.9.0. If necessary, we can update to the newest version of Bundler by running gem update bundler.

To begin to create a gem using Bundler, use the bundle gem command like this:

$ bundle gem foodie

We call our gem foodie because this gem is going to do a couple of things around food, such as portraying them as either “Delicious!” or “Gross!”. Stay tuned.

For information on gem naming conventions, you can read the “Name Your Gem” guide on the RubyGems website.

This command creates a scaffold directory for our new gem and, if we have Git installed, initializes a Git repository in this directory so we can start committing right away. If this is your first time running the bundle gem command, you will be asked whether you want to include a the CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md and LICENSE.txt files with your project. The files generated are:

• Gemfile: Used to manage gem dependencies for our library’s development. This file contains a gemspec line meaning that Bundler will include dependencies specified in foodie.gemspec too. It’s best practice to specify all the gems that our library depends on in the gemspec.

• Rakefile: Requires Bundler and adds the build, install and release Rake tasks by way of calling Bundler::GemHelper.install_tasks. The build task will build the current version of the gem and store it under the pkg folder, the install task will build and install the gem to our system (just like it would do if we gem install‘d it) and release will push the gem to Rubygems for consumption by the public.

• CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md: Provides a code of conduct that you expect all contributors to your gem to follow. Will only be included if you chose to have it included.

• LICENSE.txt: Includes the MIT license. Will only be included if you chose to have it included.

• .gitignore: (only if we have Git). This ignores anything in the pkg directory (generally files put there by rake build), anything with a .gem extension and the .bundle directory.

• foodie.gemspec: The Gem Specification file. This is where we provide information for Rubygems’ consumption such as the name, description and homepage of our gem. This is also where we specify the dependencies our gem needs to run.

• lib/foodie.rb: The main file to define our gem’s code. This is the file that will be required by Bundler (or any similarly smart system) when our gem is loaded. This file defines a module which we can use as a namespace for all our gem’s code. It’s best practice to put our code in…

• lib/foodie: here. This folder should contain all the code (classes, etc.) for our gem. The lib/foodie.rb file is there for setting up our gem’s environment, whilst all the parts of it go in this folder. If our gem has multiple uses, separating this out so that people can require one class/file at a time can be really helpful.

• lib/foodie/version.rb: Defines a Foodie module and in it, a VERSION constant. This file is loaded by the foodie.gemspec to specify a version for the gem specification. When we release a new version of the gem we will increment a part of this version number to indicate to Rubygems that we’re releasing a new version.

There’s our base and our layout, now get developing!

Testing our gem

For this guide, we’re going to use RSpec to test our gem. We write tests to ensure that everything goes according to plan and to prevent future-us from building a time machine to come back and kick our asses.

To get started with writing our tests, we’ll create a spec directory at the root of gem by using the command mkdir spec. Next, we’ll specify in our foodie.gemspec file that rspec is a development dependency by adding this line inside the Gem::Specification block:

spec.add_development_dependency "rspec", "~> 3.2"

Because we have the gemspec method call in our Gemfile, Bundler will automatically add this gem to a group called “development” which then we can reference any time we want to load these gems with the following line:

Bundler.require(:default, :development)

The benefit of putting this dependency specification inside of foodie.gemspec rather than the Gemfile is that anybody who runs gem install foodie --dev will get these development dependencies installed too. This command is used for when people wish to test a gem without having to fork it or clone it from GitHub.

When we run bundle install, rspec will be installed for this library and any other library we use with Bundler, but not for the system. This is an important distinction to make: any gem installed by Bundler will not muck about with gems installed by gem install. It is effectively a sandboxed environment. It is best practice to use Bundler to manage our gems so that we do not have gem version conflicts.

By running bundle install, Bundler will generate the extremely important Gemfile.lock file. This file is responsible for ensuring that every system this library is developed on has the exact same gems so it should always be checked into version control. For more information on this file read “THE GEMFILE.LOCK” section of the bundle install manpage.

Additionally in the bundle install output, we will see this line:

Using foodie (0.1.0) from source at /path/to/foodie

Bundler detects our gem, loads the gemspec and bundles our gem just like every other gem.

We can write our first test with this framework now in place. For testing, first we create a folder called spec to put our tests in (mkdir spec). We then create a new RSpec file for every class we want to test at the root of the spec directory. If we had multiple facets to our gem, we would group them underneath a directory such as spec/facet; but this is a simple gem, so we won’t. Let’s call this new file spec/foodie_spec.rb and fill it with the following:

describe Foodie::Food do
  it "broccoli is gross" do
    expect(Foodie::Food.portray("Broccoli")).to eql("Gross!")
  end

  it "anything else is delicious" do
    expect(Foodie::Food.portray("Not Broccoli")).to eql("Delicious!")
  end
end

When we run bundle exec rspec spec again, we’ll be told the Foodie::Food constant doesn’t exist. This is true, and we should define it in lib/foodie/food.rb like this:

module Foodie
  class Food
    def self.portray(food)
      if food.downcase == "broccoli"
        "Gross!"
      else
        "Delicious!"
      end
    end
  end
end

To load this file, we’ll need to add a require line to lib/foodie.rb for it:

require 'foodie/food'

We will also need to require the lib/foodie.rb at the top of spec/foodie_spec.rb:

require 'foodie'

When we run our specs with bundle exec rspec spec this test will pass:

2 example, 0 failures

Great success! If we’re using Git (or any other source control system), this is a great checkpoint to commit our code. Always remember to commit often!

It’s all well and dandy that we can write our own code, but what if we want to depend on another gem? That’s easy too.

Using other gems

We’re now going to use Active Support’s pluralize method by calling it using a method from our gem.

To use another gem, we must first specify it as a dependency in our foodie.gemspec. We can specify the dependency on the activesupport gem in foodie.gemspec by adding this line inside the Gem::Specification object:

spec.add_dependency "activesupport"

If we wanted to specify a particular version we may use this line:

spec.add_dependency "activesupport", "4.2.0"

Or specify a version constraint:

spec.add_dependency "activesupport", ">= 4.2.0"

However, relying on a version simply greater than the latest-at-the-time is a sure-fire way to run into problems later on down the line. Try to always use ~> for specifying dependencies:

spec.add_dependency "activesupport", "~> 4.2.0"

When we run bundle install again, the activesupport gem will be installed for us to use. Of course, like the diligent TDD/BDD zealots we are, we will test our pluralize method before we code it. Let’s add this test to spec/food_spec.rb now inside our describe Foodie::Food block:

it "pluralizes a word" do
  expect(Foodie::Food.pluralize("Tomato")).to eql("Tomatoes")
end

Of course when we run this spec with bundle exec rspec spec it will fail:

expect(Failure/Error: Foodie::Food.pluralize("Tomato")).to eql("Tomatoes")
     undefined method `pluralize' for Foodie::Food:Class

We can now define this pluralize method in lib/foodie/food.rb by first off requiring the part of Active Support which contains the pluralize method. This line should go at the top of the file, just like all good requires do.

require 'active_support/inflector'

Next, we can define the pluralize method like this:

def self.pluralize(word)
  word.pluralize
end

When we run bundle exec rspec spec our specs will pass:

3 examples, 0 failures

This brings another checkpoint where it’d be a good idea to commit our efforts so far.

It’s great that we’re able to call our gem’s methods now (all two of them!) and get them to return strings, but everybody knows that the best gems come with command line interfaces (hereafter, “CLI”). You can tell right now just how uncool this gem is because it doesn’t have a CLI, right? It needs one. It craves one.

It deserves one.

Testing a command line interface

Before we go jumping headlong into giving our gem the best darn CLI a gem-with-only-two-methods-that-both-return-useless-strings can have, let’s consider how we’re going to test this first. We’re zealots, remember? Now if only there was a tool we could use. It would have to have a cool name, of course.

Like “Aruba”. BAM

David Chelimsky and Aslak Hellesøy teamed up to create Aruba, a CLI testing tool, which they both use for RSpec and Cucumber, and now we too can use it for testing our gems. Oh hey, speaking of Cucumber that’s also what we’re going to be using to define the Aruba tests. Human-code-client-readable tests are the way of the future, man.

We will define new development dependencies in foodie.gemspec now for the Cucumber things:

spec.add_development_dependency "cucumber"
spec.add_development_dependency "aruba"

Cool. Let’s run bundle install to get these awesome tools set up.

Our CLI is going to have two methods, which correspond to the two methods which we have defined in Foodie::Food. We will now create a features directory where we will use Aruba to write tests for our CLI. In this directory we’ll create a new file called features/food.feature and fill it with this juicy code:

Feature: Food
  In order to portray or pluralize food
  As a CLI
  I want to be as objective as possible

  Scenario: Broccoli is gross
    When I run `foodie portray broccoli`
    Then the output should contain "Gross!"

  Scenario: Tomato, or Tomato?
    When I run `foodie pluralize --word Tomato`
    Then the output should contain "Tomatoes"

These scenarios test the CLI our gem will provide. In the When I run steps, the first word inside the quotes is the name of our executable, the second is the task name, and any further text is arguments or options. Yes, it is testing what appears to be the same thing as our specs. How very observant of you. Gold star! But it’s testing it through a CLI, which makes it supremely awesome. Contrived examples are in this year.

The first scenario ensures that we can call a specific task and pass it a single argument which then becomes the part of the text that is output. The second scenario ensures effectively the same thing, but we pass that value in as an option rather than an argument.

To run this feature, we use the cucumber command, but of course because it’s available within the context of our bundle, we use bundle exec cucumber like this:

$ bundle exec cucumber features/

See those yellow things? They’re undefined steps:

When /^I run "([^"]*)"$/ do |arg1|
  pending # express the regexp above with the code you wish you had
end

Then /^the output should contain "([^"]*)"$/ do |arg1|
  pending # express the regexp above with the code you wish you had
end

We can define them by requiring Aruba. In Cucumber, all .rb files in the features/support directory are automatically required. To prove this to ourselves, we can add a features/support/setup.rb file (create the support directory first) and put in this single line:

require 'aruba/cucumber'

This loads the Cucumber steps provided by Aruba which are the same steps our Cucumber features need to be awesome.

We have to re-run bundle exec cucumber features, just to see what happens next. We see red. Red like the blood incessantly seeping from the walls. It contains this cryptic message:

sh: foodie: command not found

OK, so it’s not that cryptic. It just means it can’t find the executable file for our gem. No worries, we can create a exe directory at the root of our gem, and put a file in it named foodie. This file has no extension because it’s an executable file rather than a script. We don’t want to go around calling foodie.rb everywhere, do we? No, no we don’t. We will fill this file with this content:

#!/usr/bin/env ruby
print "nothing."

If this file was completely empty, we would run into a non-friendly Errno::ENOEXEC error. Hey, speaking of running, we should chmod this file to be an executable from our terminal:

$ chmod +x exe/foodie

Alright so we’ve got the executable file, now what? If we re-run our features we get nothing for the output. Nothing! Literally!

got: "nothing."

Our exe/foodie file is empty, which results in this Nothing Travesty. Get rid of the print "nothing." line and replace it with all the code required to run our CLI, which consists of two lines:

require 'foodie/cli'
Foodie::CLI.start

Boom! When we run bundle exec cucumber features again it will whinge that there’s no foodie/cli file to require. Before we go into what this file does, we should explain the code on the other line of the exe/foodie file. The start method fires up our CLI class and will look for a task that matches the one we ask for.

Ok, so it’s therefore obvious that the next step is to create this file, but what does it do?

This new lib/foodie/cli.rb file will define the command line interface using another gem called Thor. Thor was created by Yehuda Katz (& collaborators) as an alternative to the Rake build tool. Thor provides us with a handy API for defining our CLI, including usage banners and help output. The syntax is very similar to Rake. Additionally, Rails and Bundler both use Thor for their CLI interface as well as their generator base. Yes, Thor even does generators!

For now we’ll just look at how we can craft a CLI using Thor and then afterwards, if you behave, we’ll look at how to write a generator using it too.

Crafting a CLI

To make this CLI work we’re going to need to create a Foodie::CLI class and define a start method on it. Or you know, there’s probably a gem out there for us to use. Like Thor. Named after the badass lightning god from Norse mythology, this gem is definitely on the fast-track to being just as badass. This gem is what we’ll be using to build our CLI interface and then later on the generator (if you behave, remember?).

Let’s define the lib/foodie/cli.rb file now like this:

require 'thor'
module Foodie
  class CLI < Thor

  end
end

The Thor class has a series of methods – such as the start method we reference back in exe/foodie – that we can use to create this CLI. Oh, by the way, our class doesn’t have to be called CLI, it’s just best practice to do so. We don’t magically get this Thor class; we need to tell our gemspec that we depend on this gem by adding this line underneath our previous add_dependency:

spec.add_dependency "thor"

To install this new dependency, we use bundle install. When we run bundle exec cucumber features again, we’ll see that it’s now complaining that it could not find the tasks we’re calling:

Could not find task "portray"
...
Could not find task "pluralize"

Thor tasks are defined as plain ol’ methods, but with a slight twist. To define the portray task in our Foodie::CLI class we will write this inside the Foodie::CLI class:

desc "portray ITEM", "Determines if a piece of food is gross or delicious"
def portray(name)
  puts Foodie::Food.portray(name)
end

The desc method is the “slight twist” here. The method defined after it becomes a task with the given description. The first argument for desc is the usage instructions for the task whilst the second is the short description of what that task accomplishes. The portray method is defined with a single argument, which will be the first argument passed to this task on the command line. Inside the portray method we call Foodie::Food.portray and pass it this argument.

In the Foodie::CLI class we’re referencing the Foodie::Food class without requiring the file that defines it. Under the require 'thor' at the top of this file, put this line to require the file that defines Foodie::Food:

require 'foodie'

When we re-run our features using bundle exec cucumber features our first scenario will pass:

2 scenarios (1 failed, 1 passed)
4 steps (1 failed, 3 passed)

The second is still failing because we haven’t defined the pluralize task. This time rather than defining a task that takes an argument, we’ll define a task that reads in the value from an option passed to the task. To define the pluralize task we use this code in Foodie::CLI:

desc "pluralize", "Pluralizes a word"
method_option :word, aliases: "-w"
def pluralize
  puts Foodie::Food.pluralize(options[:word])
end

Here there’s the new method_option method we use which defines, well, a method option. It takes a hash which indicates the details of an option how they should be returned to our task. Check out the Thor README for a full list of valid types. We can also define aliases for this method using the :aliases option passed to method_option. Inside the task we reference the value of the options through the options hash and we use Foodie::Food.pluralize to pluralize a word.

When we run our scenarios again with bundle exec cucumber features both scenarios will be passing:

2 scenarios (2 passed)
4 steps (4 passed)

We can try executing the CLI app by running bundle exec exe/foodie portray broccoli.

If we want to add more options later on, we can define them by using the method_options helper like this:

method_options word: :string, uppercase: :boolean
def pluralize
  # accessed as options[:word], options[:uppercase]
end

In this example, options[:word] will return a String object, whilst options[:uppercase] will return either true or false, depending on the value it has received.

This introduction should have whet your appetite to learn more about Thor and it’s encouraged that you do that now. Check out Bundler::CLI for a great example of using Thor as a CLI tool.

With our features and specs all passing now, we’re at a good point to commit our code.

It was aforementioned that we could use Thor for more than just CLI. That we could use it to create a generator. This is true. We can even create generators, but let’s not get too carried away right now and just focus on creating the one.

Testing a generator

You saw that pun coming, right? Yeah, pretty obvious.

We’re going to mix it up a bit and add a new feature to our gem: a generator for a recipes directory. The idea is that we can run our generator like this:

foodie recipe dinner steak

This will generate a recipes directory at the current location, a dinner directory inside that and then a steak.txt file inside that. This steak.txt file will contain the scaffold for a recipe, such as the ingredients and the instructions.

Thankfully for us, Aruba has ways of testing that a generator generates files and directories. Let’s create a new file called features/generator.feature and fill it with this content:

Feature: Generating things
  In order to generate many a thing
  As a CLI newbie
  I want foodie to hold my hand, tightly

  Scenario: Recipes
    When I run `foodie recipe dinner steak`
    Then the following files should exist:
      | dinner/steak.txt |
    Then the file "dinner/steak.txt" should contain:
      """
      ##### Ingredients #####
      Ingredients for delicious steak go here.


      ##### Instructions #####
      Tips on how to make delicious steak go here.
      """

It’s important to note that the word after “delicious” both times is “steak”, which is very delicious. It’s also the last argument we pass in to the command that we run, and therefore should be a dynamic variable in our template. We’ll see how to do this soon.

When we run this feature we’ll be told that it cannot find the dinner/steak.txt file that we asked the generator to do. Why not?

Writing a generator

Well, because currently we don’t have a recipe task that does this for us defined in Foodie::CLI. We can define a generator class just like we define a CLI class:

desc "recipe", "Generates a recipe scaffold"
def recipe(group, name)
  Foodie::Generators::Recipe.start([group, name])
end

The first argument for this method are the arguments passed to the generator. We will need to require the file for this new class too, which we can do by putting this line at the top of lib/foodie/cli.rb:

require 'foodie/generators/recipe'

To define this class, we inherit from Thor::Group rather than Thor. We will also need to include the Thor::Actions module to define helper methods for our generator which include the likes of those able to create files and directories. Because this is a generator class, we will put it in a new namespace called “generators”, making the location of this file lib/foodie/generators/recipe.rb:

require 'thor/group'
module Foodie
  module Generators
    class Recipe < Thor::Group
      include Thor::Actions

      argument :group, type: :string
      argument :name, type: :string
    end
  end
end

By inheriting from Thor::Group, we’re defining a generator rather than a CLI. When we call argument, we are defining arguments for our generator. These are the same arguments in the same order they are passed in from the recipe task back in Foodie::CLI

To make this generator, ya know, generate stuff we simply define methods in the class. All methods defined in a Thor::Group descendant will be run when start is called on it. Let’s define a create_group method inside this class which will create a directory using the name we have passed in.

def create_group
  empty_directory(group)
end

To put the file in this directory and to save our foodie-friends some typing, we will use the template method. This will copy over a file from a pre-defined source location and evaluate it as if it were an ERB template. We will define a copy_recipe method to do this now:

def copy_recipe
  template("recipe.txt", "#{group}/#{name}.txt")
end

If we had any ERB calls in this file, they would be evaluated and the result would be output in the new template file.

It’s been an awful long time since we ran something. Hey, here’s an idea! Let’s run our generator! We can do this without using Cucumber by running bundle exec exe/foodie recipe dinner steak, but just this once. Generally we’d test it solely through Cucumber. When we run this command we’ll be told all of this:

create  dinner
Could not find "recipe.txt" in any of your source paths. Please invoke Foodie::Generators::Recipe.source_root(PATH) with the PATH containing your templates. Currently you have no source paths.

The first line tells us that the dinner directory has been created. Nothing too fancy there.

The second line is more exciting though! It’s asking us to define the source_root method for our generator. That’s easy! We can define it as a class method in Foodie::Generators::Recipe like this:

def self.source_root
  File.dirname(__FILE__) + "/recipe"
end

This tells our generator where to find the template. Now all we need to do is to create the template, which we can put at lib/foodie/generators/recipe/recipe.txt:

##### Ingredients #####
Ingredients for delicious <%= name %> go here.


##### Instructions #####
Tips on how to make delicious <%= name %> go here.

When we use the template method, the template file is treated like an ERB template which is evaluated within the current binding which means that it has access to the same methods and variables as the method that calls it.

And that’s all! When we run bundle exec cucumber features all our features will be passing!

3 scenarios (3 passed)
7 steps (7 passed)

Amazing stuff, hey?

Releasing the gem

If we haven’t already, we should commit all the files for our repository:

$ git add .
$ git commit -m "The beginnings of the foodie gem"

This is because the foodie.gemspec file uses git ls-files to detect which files should be added to the gem when we release it.

The final step before releasing our gem is to give it a summary and description in the foodie.gemspec file.

Now we’re going to make sure that our gem is ready to be published. To do this, we can run rake build which will build a local copy of our gem and then gem install pkg/foodie-0.1.0.gem to install it. Then we can try it locally by running the commands that it provides. Once we know everything’s working, then we can release the first version.

To release the first version of our gem we can use the rake release command, providing we have committed everything. This command does a couple of things. First it builds the gem to the pkg directory in preparation for a push to Rubygems.org.

Second, it creates a tag for the current commit reflecting the current version and pushes it to the git remote. It’s encouraged that we host the code on GitHub so that others may easily find it.

If this push succeeds then the final step will be the push to Rubygems.org which will now allow other people to download and install the gem.

If we want to release a second version of our gem, we should make our changes and then commit them to GitHub. Afterwards, we will bump the version number in lib/foodie/version.rb to whatever we see fit, make another commit to GitHub with a useful message such as “bumped to 0.0.2” and then run rake release again.

If we want to make this process a little easier we could install the “gem-release” gem with:

$ gem install gem-release

This gem provides several methods for helping with gem development in general, but most helpful is the gem bump command which will bump the gem version to the next patch level. This method also takes options to do these things:

$ gem bump --version minor # bumps to the next minor version
$ gem bump --version major # bumps to the next major version
$ gem bump --version 1.1.1 # bumps to the specified version

For more information, check out the “gem-release” GitHub repository homepage.

Summary

Whilst this isn’t an exhaustive guide on developing a gem, it covers the basics needed for gem development. It’s really, really recommended that you check out the source for Bundler, Rails and RSpec for great examples of gem development.

If you’re looking for the complete source code for this example it can be found here

Many thanks to author of this guide: Ryan Bigg. You can find more of his guides here.