# Ruby Mendicant 2.0 (An Effort To Make RubySpec even more awesome)

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ruby-mendicant-2-0-an-effort-to-make-rubyspec-even-more-awesome/169544>\
**Category:** Ruby\
**Created:** [June 5, 2009, 1:05am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ruby-mendicant-2-0-an-effort-to-make-rubyspec-even-more-awesome/169544 "2009-06-05T01:05:43Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![naething](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/n/e47774/32.png) [@naething](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/naething)\
**Post date:** [June 5, 2009, 1:05am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ruby-mendicant-2-0-an-effort-to-make-rubyspec-even-more-awesome/169544/1 "2009-06-05T01:05:43Z")

</div>

Hi folks,

For those familiar with Ruby Mendicant  
([http://majesticseacreature.com/mendicant/](http://majesticseacreature.com/mendicant/)), this is actually a  
totally different project. But it does have to do with community  
funded open source development, and since the title has a nice ring to  
it, it’s worthy of being the subject line for this post.

For those who know and like RubySpec, and would like to see it more  
accessible to the community at large, get ready for something totally  
sweet. But first, a quick synopsis:

== Synopsis ==

I would like to spend 8 weeks of this summer hacking hard on building  
a nice community resource that builds on the RubySpec project. It  
will be a web based search and reporting system for displaying the  
RubySpec sources for every class and method that it covers, as well  
pass/fail data across implementations and ruby versions. Though it  
was hit with an ugly stick, here is a mockup that shows one possible  
use of such a system: [http://is.gd/OvDW](http://is.gd/OvDW)  
The full scope of the project will likely support more features than  
what is shown there, this shows just one aspect of the project.

I plan to work openly with the Ruby community and Ruby implementers to  
come up with a decent roadmap, and then go to work on it. This  
project will be partially supported by the company I do most of my  
work for, Madriska Media Group, but I’d like to bridge the gap with  
community donations. $500/wk in exchange for 10 dedicated hours of  
work on top of whatever Madriska funds (along with my spare time),  
would put me in a good position to be able to do this. I’ll do  
these in two rounds of $2000 drives, one that’s already open, and  
another that’ll open on July 15th.

There will be a roadmap out by June 15th, but if this is enough  
information for you and you trust me, here’s a pledgie link:  
[http://pledgie.com/campaigns/4640](http://pledgie.com/campaigns/4640)

== Details ===

I’ve taken funding to work on open source several times before. I  
worked on Ruport as a GSoc project in 2006 (which lead to the  
beginnings of our Rails support), and brought you Prawn via the Ruby  
Mendicant project in 2008. If you donate to this project, I’m pretty  
sure you will not be let down. But incase you need convincing, here  
are some additional details on this project, along with its  
motivation.

MOTIVATION:

When researching for a talk titled “Where is Ruby Really Headed?”, I  
realized that question was fairly impossible to answer. Instead, a  
better question to answer was simply “What is Ruby right now?” and it  
turns out that’s a tough cookie too. If you want the whole story  
about what I found out, go ahead and watch this confreaks video of my  
talk:  
[http://goruco2009.confreaks.com/30-may-2009-11-00-where-is-ruby-really-heading-gregory-brown.html](http://goruco2009.confreaks.com/30-may-2009-11-00-where-is-ruby-really-heading-gregory-brown.html)

But researching the alternative implementations really gave me a lot  
of opportunity to learn about some of the side projects that have been  
developed that have the potential to be absolutely invaluable to  
Rubyists, no matter what implementations they’re using. RubySpec is  
one of these bi-products, and to me, represents one of the coolest  
innovations in Ruby to date. Brian F. does a better job explaining  
this than I could, so please check out this interview with him for a  
good answer to why RubySpec matters and how it can be valuable as a  
community resource:  
[http://blog.rubybestpractices.com/posts/gregory/006-brian-ford-rubyspec.html](http://blog.rubybestpractices.com/posts/gregory/006-brian-ford-rubyspec.html)

I really want to make it so that every Rubyist can learn from whats in  
these specs, and I also want to bring their results to the forefront  
so you can know what it means when someone says they have a compatible  
implementation according to the RubySpec. Truth be told, I hope my  
project is a stop-gap that gets more and more people to hack on  
RubySpec itself, but it seems like it’ll be nice to lift up some of  
these results so that people stop thinking that RubySpec is just a  
tool for implementers.

TIMELINE:

Right now, I’m just in the formative stages. I’m trying to solicit  
feedback, get some early supporters to donate, and begin sketching out  
the roadmap.

By June 15th I’ll have a plan laid out publicly, after talking with  
implementers and community members. By July 15th, I’ll have a  
working alpha implementation of the web app that’ll provide the search  
and reporting functionality  
Depending where we’re headed with things, I’ll either spend the time  
from July 15th to August 15th on window dressing, or I’ll keep hacking  
on core functionality in hopes of an official launch on August 15th.

RESOURCES:

To donate:  
[http://pledgie.com/campaigns/4640](http://pledgie.com/campaigns/4640)

To ask questions:  
[http://groups.google.com/group/ruby-unity](http://groups.google.com/group/ruby-unity)

To learn more about RubySpec:  
[http://rubyspec.org/](http://rubyspec.org/)  
[http://blog.rubybestpractices.com/posts/gregory/006-brian-ford-rubyspec.html](http://blog.rubybestpractices.com/posts/gregory/006-brian-ford-rubyspec.html)

To keep an eye out for up to the minute updates about this project:  
[http://github.com/madriska/unity](http://github.com/madriska/unity)  
[http://twitter.com/seacreature](http://twitter.com/seacreature) (This is also my personal account  
though, so be aware of some noise)

Similar to Ruby Mendicant, I value transparency very highly here,  
about the whole project.  
So please do let me know of any concerns you might have. Unlike the  
Mendicant project, funding can come in while this project is already  
under works, so feel free to hold off until you’re pretty sure you can  
get behind what I plan to do.

Thanks, and PLEASE SPREAD THE WORD!

-greg