Gemcutter is a new gem hosting repository that aims to replace RubyForge as the canonical repository for gems. The project has been around for a couple of months, but Thoughtbot recently announced they're helping out with a forthcoming redesign of the site.
As part of the plan to get everyone using it as their main gem repository, Gemcutter has already imported all of the gems that were on RubyForge - meaning there are over 5000 gems on there already.
After installing Gemcutter (with gem install gemcutter), consumers of gems just need one command to set Gemcutter up as their primary source:
gem tumble
As a publisher, you can just use the git-esque "gem push" command to release a new version of your gem.
gem push yourgem-0.0.1.gem
If you had a gem on Rubyforge and it has been migrated across, then there's a simple procedure for claiming it.
Other than ease of publishing, other benefits of Gemcutter include the way it sidesteps the confusion surrounding Github's naming policy for gems (i.e. prepending the Github username to the gem), and that it provides easy, obvious access to project-pages for the gems.
When I first came accross Thoughtbot's post on the Giant Robots blog, I originally thought that Gemcutter belonged to them, and great as Thoughtbot are, I was still a little bit worried about a single company taking ownership of a large slice of Ruby-community real-estate. Nick Quaranto, the owner of the Gemcutter Github repo (and intern at Thoughtbot) has assured me, though, that it belongs to the community first and foremost.
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