Merging Jeweler and Juwelier

[flajann2]

Currently, I am putting a lot of new features into Juwelier, but maintaining 2 code bases can be a bit cumbersome, so eventually I want to merge both. However, the name space issue looms large, and I may have to do some nasty tricks to make it work, because I do NOT want to abandon those using Juwelier, and many are still using Jeweler.

So what I might wind up doing is, after the merge, I will simply do simultaneous releases to both places. I am open to suggestions on better approaches. RubyGem does not appear to have a "transitional package" option like apt-get does.

Any thoughts and criticisms are welcome. I won't begin on this until I clear out the outstanding issues with both code bases.

[technicalpickles]

Here's one approach I have thought of.

• decide on which will be merged into the other. I'll use merging juwelier into jeweler for the rest of this, but definitely open to discussion
• in juwelier, add a dependency on a specific version of jeweler
• remove most of code in juwelier except enough to act as a shim, ie:

require 'jeweler'
Juwelier = Jeweler

• also log a warning in the top level juwelier.rb to say that juewlier and jeweler have been merged, and to replace require 'juwelier' with require 'jeweler' and Juwelier with Jeweller, and say that both will be released until some specific version or date in the future
• in jeweler, add the same code to suport compatibility, ie constants Juwelier = Jeweler and paths, with deprecation warnings. This would catch users that have updated their gem dependency, but not updated their code to use the new constants.

[flajann2]

I will most likely merge everything back into Jeweler, since most of the users are there.

BTW, there's no way for me to change the subject line on Jeweler, which still says the code is "unmaintained". Is there a way I can be granted permission to change that line? Or maybe I should fork Jeweler into my GitHub account? Since many reference your repo, I'd prefer to do it in place.

[technicalpickles]

I fixed the the repo description for now. I don't think there's a way to give someone else admin access (ie needed for description) to personal repos (just on organization repos).

I think it is possible to 'change the direction' of forks, so if you do a fresh fork of jeweler, I can file a support request to make it the primary. Links would still go to this repo, and I could replace the README with a message of what happened.

I could also make a jeweler org (not jewler since it's taken) and move the repo there and add you as an admin. The upside is that a repository should have an automatic redirect as part of it, ie links still work.

[flajann2]

Interesting. Let me see what I need/want to do on my end. Thanks. I'll be in touch. :)