Nugget is a minimal gem structure for all those peeps that want to get a kickstart on creating a gem without having a development or test dependency on external tools like hoe, jeweller or the like.

"Out of the box", nugget will give you the basic directory structure for a gem file, with a gemspec and a spec suite to start testing.

Where you go from there is up to you :)

Nugget produces a directory tree that looks like this (for the gem super_awesome):

It does not install any gem requirements in your app to generate gemspecs or "manage" your gems.

You can run it directly from the code on github:

$ ruby -s <(curl -s https://raw.github.com/reInteractive/nugget/master/install.rb)

Or you can clone it to your local box and run it:

$ git clone git:https://github.com/reInteractive/nugget.git
$ ruby nugget/install.rb

You will be asked for the following:

• Gem name
• Your name
• Your email
• Git SSH read/write path for your gem

The gem name of your gem must be a valid ruby variable name, for example:

my_gem            # <= OK
supergem          # <= OK
Super Awesome Gem # <= not this, kittehs will die

The read write SSH git repository URL of your gem looks something like this:

[email protected]:mikel/nugget.git

Providing your name and your email allows us to populate your gemspec file correctly.

Nugget will then build a basic gem folder structure using RSpec for you and setup everything you need to start writing failing specs.

Now that you have a gem directory, what should you do? I recommend this:

• Edit the README in your new gem and commit the changes, see README Driven Development by Tom Preston-Werner for more info. Once done, do the following:

$ git add README.md
$ git commit README.md -m "First commit"
$ git push origin master

• Modify the gemspec to update the description and summary info
• Commit and push the rest of the code:

$ git add .
$ git commit -m "Basic gem structure from nugget"
$ git push

Now you will have a basic library structure to start editing your gem with no external dependencies.

First things first,

Write your specs and write your code.

Once done, use the standard gem tools to deploy:

$ rake                # To run all your specs!
$ vi lib/<yourgem>/version.rb   # Edit to suit
$ git tag v0.0.1
$ git push
$ git push --tags
$ rake build          # Creates a gem file for you using the lastest version
$ rake release        # Releases your gem to rubygems

And you are done.

• Turn nugget into an executable gem instead of a simple script to allow:

$ gem install nugget
$ nugget super_awesome

• Add specs to nugget
• Allow a flag to use test unit instead of rspec
• Allow a flag to generate a Rails 3 friendly gem

As there is no test suite in place yet, feel free to fork and send me pull requests. Or help by writing some tests :)

Nugget is released under the MIT licenses. See the LICENSE.txt file. Copyright 2011 Mikel Lindsaar, RubyX.

Enjoy.