Last week, the latest version of Ruby packaging library/tool, RubyGems, was released. Version 1.3.2 not only has a bunch of bug fixes (including supporting https URLs for gem sources) and improvements, but a number of new features. The biggest new feature is support for plugins. Plugins can be used to add commands to the gem command line tool or install/uninstall hooks. InfoQ's Mirko Stocker has put together a good summary of the new functionality along with some comments directly from RubyGems maintainer Eric Hodel.

Ryan Davis has already released a plugin called graph that produces a graph of your gems and their dependency states. Eric Hodel has produced rubypan, a plugin that adds a handy "gem ferret" command that searches Rubypan (a RubyGem metadata search site) - for example: gem ferret Eric Hodel will return a list of plugins by Eric.

I'd love to have a Ruby Inside post featuring a collection of RubyGems plugins in a month or two, so if you build one, let me know using the usual channels or leave a comment here.