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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.