# Managing Plugins/Gems for a specific app

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/managing-plugins-gems-for-a-specific-app/150452>\
**Category:** Rails\
**Created:** [October 8, 2008, 7:24pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/managing-plugins-gems-for-a-specific-app/150452 "2008-10-08T19:24:42Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![CPerry](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/c/9d8465/32.png) [@CPerry](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/CPerry)\
**Post date:** [October 8, 2008, 7:24pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/managing-plugins-gems-for-a-specific-app/150452/1 "2008-10-08T19:24:42Z")

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I am curious to know what the best way (or most ideal way) is to  
handle keeping gems/plugins updated for a Rails app that gets updated  
quite frequently.

I am currently building an app that will be using like 8 plugins,  
along with 9-10 gem packages. I would like to keep these updated as  
well as possible while making it easy on myself to do so. Also, I want  
to be sure that when deployment time comes, I make that process as  
easy as possible as well.

For the plugin side of things, I have been checking out the new  
“git\_plugins” plugin and it looks promising.  
[http://www.railslodge.com/plugins/1208-git-plugins](http://www.railslodge.com/plugins/1208-git-plugins)

For those of you using a lot of gems/plugins, how do you keep them  
maintained and up to date easily?

–Cory

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**Author:** ![CPerry](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/c/9d8465/32.png) [@CPerry](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/CPerry)\
**Post date:** [October 9, 2008, 2:08am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/managing-plugins-gems-for-a-specific-app/150452/2 "2008-10-09T02:08:54Z")

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If you are using a recent version of (Rails 2.0+ I think) you can use  
the config.gem directive in environnment.rb like this :

config.gem “hpricot”, :version =\> ‘0.6’, :source =\> “http://  
[code.whytheluckystiff.net](http://code.whytheluckystiff.net)”

After that, you can do a rake gems:install on new installations.

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**Author:** ![CPerry](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/c/9d8465/32.png) [@CPerry](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/CPerry)\
**Post date:** [October 10, 2008, 4:45pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/managing-plugins-gems-for-a-specific-app/150452/3 "2008-10-10T16:45:55Z")

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I found this little nugget of info from Ryan Daigle’s blog. This looks  
like what you are talking about right David?

[http://ryandaigle.com/articles/2008/4/1/what-s-new-in-edge-rails-gem-dependencies](http://ryandaigle.com/articles/2008/4/1/what-s-new-in-edge-rails-gem-dependencies)

–Cory

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**Author:** ![CPerry](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/c/9d8465/32.png) [@CPerry](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/CPerry)\
**Post date:** [October 14, 2008, 5:57pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/managing-plugins-gems-for-a-specific-app/150452/4 "2008-10-14T17:57:51Z")

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Yep exactly!