I just added automatic plugin loading to deprec2 using Zeds gem_plugin gem. Now, a number of people have been asking if deprec will support other linux distro’s (and even other OS’s!). While I’m not interested in implementing them myself (until I get sick of Ubuntu) I love freedom so decided to extract all Ubuntu specific functionality into a plugin and allow others to write their own plugins.

You can now write a plugin that will be loaded automatically by deprec2 with no manual intervention or configuration required by the user. Follow the tutorial on the gem_plugin site but here’s the core of it:

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  setup_gem(name, version) do |spec|
    spec.summary = "The deprec_ubuntu GemPlugin"
    spec.description = spec.summary
    spec.author="Mike Bailey"
    spec.add_dependency('gem_plugin', '>= 0.2.2')
    spec.add_dependency('deprec', '>= 2.0.0')
    spec.files += Dir.glob("resources/**/*")
  end

Make your gem dependent on gem_plugin and deprec. The way this works is clever. When deprec starts, it requires gem_plugin which goes and looks through the other locally installed gems. If it finds any gems that have gem_plugin and deprec as dependencies, it loads their init.rb file.

So installed a third party plugin to support a new distro for deprec be as simple as:

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sudo gem install deprec_beos

Note: I’m still hacking on deprec2 – hoping for a preview release this week!