In this train wreck of rails gems, there is plenty of confusion. I blew off enum-columns not realizing I was not supposed to blow off enum_columns. Package naming conventions would be nice. You guys ever hear about CPAN, or linux RPMs?
What about this crap where someone creates a package. Gets bored, or finds a job and drops the package. Then someone branches the package, fixes a few bugs, then all of a sudden, we have the joeblow-package. If we are lucky, the original author of package adds a note about joeblow-package, or god forbid, takes the fixes and we don’t have to care about joeblow-package anymore. Or even better, finds a new maintainer.
But that does not seem to happen. It’s a fucking free for all where people don’t have to play nice. Just create your own branch off a package. The bored or fully employed original gem owner never tries to suck in your branch. Then you can have your own version of a gem that works for you. We are the users trying to get a job done without reinventing the hammer wasting a day figuring out which branch of which gem we should be using.
If you don’t care anymore, change the readme and make it clear that the project is dead. Or see if one of the people who created branches has the wherewithal to take over as maintainer of the gem. I know old school. Nobody maintains shit anymore. Dump and go.
I’ve been paid to write code in Java, Perl, Python, PHP and not RAILS. I have seen my share of well maintained and poorly maintained libraries. Ruby is tipping the scales in the wrong direction.
People bitch about Perl. RAILs, isn’t it just object oriented Perl? Lots of opportunity for unmaintainable obtuse code. But it is object oriented 
Why is it I find I only blog when I have to let off some steam. Yes today was spend getting a solid package for dealing with database enum fields and foreign keys in my migrate scripts under Rails 3.
