# Rails 3 plugin development - recommended practices?

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/rails-3-plugin-development-recommended-practices/197054>\
**Category:** Rails\
**Created:** [August 21, 2010, 4:05pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/rails-3-plugin-development-recommended-practices/197054 "2010-08-21T16:05:48Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![kristianm](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/k/7c8e57/32.png) [@kristianm](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/kristianm)\
**Post date:** [August 21, 2010, 4:05pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/rails-3-plugin-development-recommended-practices/197054/1 "2010-08-21T16:05:48Z")

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I have been thinking that there must be some better ways of doing  
Rails plugin development than my current approach. currently I tend to  
have my plugin in one location as a gem and then link to it from my  
Rails 3 app vendor plugins folder with a symlink. Then I have to carry  
around the whole Rails 3 app as baggage for development. What is the  
better option?

Aren’t there some libraries, tools out there specifically to meet this  
need? Seems like various plugin developers each have their own setup  
for doing this!?

I tend to use RSpec 2 for all my testing needs. How does rspec-rails  
fit into this?