Creating Your Own Gem

Ruby allows developers to create their own reusable libraries, called gems.

In this lesson, you will learn how to build and publish a Ruby gem.

Starting a New Gem Project

Use Bundler to generate a new gem structure:

bundle gem my_gem

Understanding Gem File Structure

A generated gem project includes:

• lib/: Contains the main gem code.
• my_gem.gemspec: Defines gem metadata.
• Rakefile: Used for automation tasks.

Writing Gem Code

Edit the lib/my_gem.rb file to define the gem’s functionality.

module MyGem
  def self.hello
    'Hello from MyGem!'
  end
end

Editing the .gemspec File

The my_gem.gemspec file contains metadata about your gem.

Gem::Specification.new do |spec|
  spec.name        = 'my_gem'
  spec.version     = '0.1.0'
  spec.summary     = 'A simple example gem'
  spec.authors     = ['Your Name']
  spec.files       = Dir['lib/**/*.rb']
end

Building the Gem

Run the following command to create a gem package:

gem build my_gem.gemspec

Installing and Testing Your Gem Locally

Install your gem locally before publishing:

gem install ./my_gem-0.1.0.gem

Publishing Your Gem to RubyGems.org

To publish your gem, first authenticate and then push the gem:

gem push my_gem-0.1.0.gem

Congratulations!

You have learned how to create and publish your own Ruby gem.

This concludes the 'Working with Gems and Bundler' section.