The Story
I'm still working on "Project TokiDoki", and I must say, I'm getting pretty excited about all the stuff that I managed to build into it.  Yay!

It's been slow going for the past few weeks, as I've changed gears from "Rails Power Coder" to "HTML/CSS/Gimp Artist".  Sorry, doing CSS Style Themes simply isn't my thing, and I'd rather have a root canal than spend several days with Gimp doing gradient blends, or cobbling together "Yet Another Rounded Corner Solution".

After working on "Project TokiDoki" for the past few months, I've finally reached a point where it makes sense to roll in some external Rails Plugins to fill in some of the gaps.  So I pop into Aptana's Plugins pane and take a look at what's available.  The simple, common things like CreatedBy/UpdatedBy support, System Settings, Theme Support, and maybe reCAPTCHA support are just "busy work" I don't want to write, and I figure they're common and mature enough to be available as a Plugin in the Rails Community.

Gripe #1 - Bit Rot.  Loads and Loads of BIT ROT!
One problem with the Rails Plugins repository that irritates the hell out of me is the amount of ABSOLUTE CRAP in there.  I blame WorkingWithRails.com and other "Rails Wannabe" community sites for contributing to this mess, with their "Rails Authority" ratings.  WWR.com gives you more "Rails Credibility" if you publish a Rails Plugin, and judging from the Plugins Repository, it looks like everyone and their Grandma has published a plugin.

If that's not bad enough, the Plugin Ratings (as published by Aptana -- I assume they pick up their info from agilewebdevelopment.com) are not reliable, and DO NOT ACCOUNT for which Rails Version the plugins are compatible with.  FFS, guys.. that aging "Rating 5 of 5" plugin written 2 years ago for Rails 1.1 doesn't do me a lick of good when I'm running Rails 2.0.2.  The Plugin Ratings feature needs some reworking, and I strongly suggest publishing a "Compatible With" field so tools like Aptana can match the RAILS_GEM_VERSION required in my project's environment.rb file, and filter out Plugins that aren't compatible with my Rails Version.

Gripe #2 - No Namespaces
One thing that Java has gotten right is the fact that they NAMESPACE-PREFIX Java Jars.  Why oh why hasn't this become "standard practice" with naming Rails Plugins?  We could have six or seven "acts_as_foo" Plugins in the Plugins Repository (with various combinations of spellings to make them "unique" in the Repository).  Is it so hard to use "<AuthorName>_acts_as_foo" as the Plugin Name, and rework the Plugin Search feature to do a LIKE search on "acts_as_foo" as a search term to get the relevant entries into my search results?  Otherwise, I'm searching for "acts_as_foo", "Acts_as_foo", "Acts as Foo", and other bastardized mis-spellings just to see if I get a search hit.

That would give me a better search result, as I can evaluate the Plugin, more easily figure out who the Author is, and then do another Plugin Search on the Author's Name to find any other jewels that I may find useful.

Seriously, even Perl's CPAN Repository has got things laid out better than Rails Plugins.  As Rubyists, we all should be insulted by that fact -- especially since CPAN is way older.  The Rails Plugins Repository architects should've learned from CPAN's shortcomings to build something BETTER.  I wonder if Merb has a better system for managing plugins -- because if they do, I'll switch to Merb immediately.

In Closing
I will happily withdraw any of these gripes if someone can point me to a better "Rails Plugin Search" solution that kicks Aptana's butt.. because if the Aptana Plugin Search is a mashup of the best that's out there, I don't see Rails Plugins as being a useful repository.  There are too many plugins to wade through, and I've yet to find a site that makes it easy to find the top-rated plugins that do the job.

After working on "Project TokiDoki" for the past few months, I've finally reached a point where it makes sense to roll in some external Rails Plugins to fill in some of the gaps.  So I pop into Aptana's Plugins pane and take a look at what's available.  The simple, common things like CreatedBy/UpdatedBy support, System Settings, Theme Support, and maybe reCAPTCHA support are just "busy work" I don't want to write, and I figure they're common and mature enough to be available as a Plugin in the Rails Community.

Gripe #1 - Bit Rot.  Loads and Loads of BIT ROT!
One problem with the Rails Plugins repository that irritates the hell out of me is the amount of ABSOLUTE CRAP in there.  I blame WorkingWithRails.com and other "Rails Wannabe" community sites for contributing to this mess, with their "Rails Authority" ratings.  WWR.com gives you more "Rails Credibility" if you publish a Rails Plugin, and judging from the Plugins Repository, it looks like everyone and their Grandma has published a plugin.

If that's not bad enough, the Plugin Ratings (as published by Aptana -- I assume they pick up their info from agilewebdevelopment.com) are not reliable, and DO NOT ACCOUNT for which Rails Version the plugins are compatible with.  FFS, guys.. that aging "Rating 5 of 5" plugin written 2 years ago for Rails 1.1 doesn't do me a lick of good when I'm running Rails 2.0.2.  The Plugin Ratings feature needs some reworking, and I strongly suggest publishing a "Compatible With" field so tools like Aptana can match the RAILS_GEM_VERSION required in my project's environment.rb file, and filter out Plugins that aren't compatible with my Rails Version.

Gripe #2 - No Namespaces
One thing that Java has gotten right is the fact that they NAMESPACE-PREFIX Java Jars.  Why oh why hasn't this become "standard practice" with naming Rails Plugins?  We could have six or seven "acts_as_foo" Plugins in the Plugins Repository (with various combinations of spellings to make them "unique" in the Repository).  Is it so hard to use "<AuthorName>_acts_as_foo" as the Plugin Name, and rework the Plugin Search feature to do a LIKE search on "acts_as_foo" as a search term to get the relevant entries into my search results?  Otherwise, I'm searching for "acts_as_foo", "Acts_as_foo", "Acts as Foo", and other bastardized mis-spellings just to see if I get a search hit.

That would give me a better search result, as I can evaluate the Plugin, more easily figure out who the Author is, and then do another Plugin Search on the Author's Name to find any other jewels that I may find useful.

Seriously, even Perl's CPAN Repository has got things laid out better than Rails Plugins.  As Rubyists, we all should be insulted by that fact -- especially since CPAN is way older.  The Rails Plugins Repository architects should've learned from CPAN's shortcomings to build something BETTER.  I wonder of Merb has a better system for managing plugins -- because if they do, I'll switch to Merb immediately.

In Closing
I will happily withdraw any of these gripes if someone can point me to a better "Rails Plugin Search" solution that kicks Aptana's butt.. because if the Aptana Plugin Search is a mashup of the best that's out there, I don't see Rails Plugins as being a useful repository.  There are too many plugins to wade through, and I've yet to find a site that makes it easy to find the top-rated plugins that do the job.