Acts_as_taggable smakdown

Rails
1

Okay, so I just realized there seems to be two acts_as_taggable
modules, the gem and the plugin

  1. which came first?
  2. what’s the difference? (internals, not ones a gem and ones a plugin)
  3. which one is better? :wink:

–
Craig B.

http://www.luckybonza.com
AIM: kreiggers

2

On Jun 21, 2006, at 10:39 PM, Craig B. wrote:

Okay, so I just realized there seems to be two acts_as_taggable
modules, the gem and the plugin

  1. which came first?

I would guess that the plugin almost certainly came before the gem
version. But I don’t know for certain.

  1. what’s the difference? (internals, not ones a gem and ones a
    plugin)

The biggest difference is that once you install the gem onto a
computer, the acts_as_taggable module is then made available to all
Rails apps hosted on that computer. With the plugin, you need to
install that into each Rails app that you want to use the module.

  1. which one is better? :wink:

Neither. My guess is that they are exactly the same code. The
question should be, which is the right one for me to use? And the way
you answer that has to do with whether or not you have rights to
install the gem version, and whether or not you expect to use
acts_as_taggable in multiple Rails apps…

If you can’t install the gem, you can certainly install the plugin
into vendor/plugins, since you clearly have access to write into the
app’s root-level folder. If you only need the module for this one
app, then installing the gem might be overkill and the plugin version
makes more sense.

-Brian

3

Brian H. wrote:

The biggest difference is that once you install the gem onto a computer,
the acts_as_taggable module is then made available to all Rails apps
hosted on that computer. With the plugin, you need to install that into
each Rails app that you want to use the module.

  1. which one is better? :wink:

Neither. My guess is that they are exactly the same code.

They are actually quite a bit different.

Here’s a good blog on it, including the history:

http://www.notio.com/2006/02/rails_acts_as_t.html

Regards,
Blair

–
Blair Z., Ph.D.
[email protected]
Subversion training, consulting and support
http://www.orcaware.com/svn/