Create a Plugin or a Gem? e.g. - will_paginate

Rails
1

I noticed that will_paginate is now being distributed as a plugin. In
the readme, it states:

"You should switch to using the gem:

gem install will_paginate

After that, you can remove the plugin from your application and add
a simple require to the end of config/environment.rb:

require ‘will_paginate’"

I am want to reuse code and am trying to understand the advantages of
using a gem vs a plugin. I thought the “rails way” is to use plugins
but now that I see will_paginate is using a gem, I am trying to
understand what advantages gem distributions have for use in rails
projects?

Thank you,

John

2

Same question here. I think plugin is better because it’s ‘freezed’ in
your code base so easier to deploy to production environment. What’s
the advantage of using gem?

Thanks
Jan

3

http://gemsonrails.rubyforge.org - Great for freezing gems to vendor
for ease of deployment to production.