= Announce: RubyGems Release 0.8.11

RubyGems Version 0.8.11 is now available.  This release includes a
number of fixes and enhancements, including the work from the Seattle
Ruby Brigade's RubyGems codefest.

* Improved performance
* Ability to sign gems (see http://docs.rubygems.org/read/chapter/21)
* New Command: gem contents -- List the contents of an installed gem
* New Command: gem rdoc -- Generate rdoc files from an installed gem

== What is RubyGems?

RubyGems is a package management system for Ruby applications and
libraries.  RubyGems one command download makes installing Ruby software
fun and enjoyable again. (Ok, not really.)

Many gems are available for download from the RubyForge site.  Browse
the list of gems with a "gem list --remote" command and download what
you need with a simple "gem install <name-of-gem>".  RubyGems takes care
of the details of installing, not only the gem you requested, but also
any gems needed by the software you selected.

== RubyGems Statistics

* About 326 different gems available (Around 100 new gems since the
  0.8.10 release)
* Nearly 64,000 downloads of the RubyGems software
* Almost 600,000 gem downloads

If you are interested in finding out when new gems are released, I
maintain an RSS feed at http://onestepback.org/gemwatch.rss.

== How can I get RubyGems?

If you have a recent version of RubyGems (0.8.5 or later), then all
you need to do is:

  $ gem update --system   (you might need to be admin/root)

(Note: You may have to run the command twice if you have any previosly
installed rubygems-update gems).

If you have an older version of RubyGems installed, then you can still
do it in two steps:

  $ gem install rubygems-update  (again, might need to be admin/root)
  $ update_rubygems              (... here too)

If you don't have any gems install, there is still the pre-gem
approach to getting software ... doing it manually:

1. DOWNLOAD FROM: http://rubyforge.org/frs/?group_id=126
2. UNPACK INTO A DIRECTORY AND CD THERE
3. INSTALL WITH:  ruby setup.rb all  (you may need admin/root privilege)

== Recent Changes

* -y is a synonym for --include-dependencies.
* Better handling of errors in the top level rescue clause.
* Package list command (e.g. gem inspect GEM).
* .gemrc now allows cvsrc-like options to set defaults per subcommand.
* The autorequire gem spec field will now accept a list.
* Substituted Time for Date in specs, increasing performance
  dramatically.
* Fixed reported bug of gem directories ending in "-" (reported by
  Erik Hatcher).
* Fixed but in installer that caused dependency installation to not
  work.
* Added Paul Duncan's gem signing patch.
* Added Mark Hubbart's Framework patch (for better integration with OS
  X).
* Added David Glasser's install-from-mirror patch.
* Additional internal structural cleanup and test reorganization.

== What's Next

We will probably see one more release in the 0.8.x series (hopefully
soon) where the source index download function will be revised to
perform better with a large number gems.

After that, the 0.9.x series will start unifying the local and remote
installers to get more consistent behavior.

== Thanks

Major contributors to this release include:

* Thanks to the  Seattle Ruby  Brigade (Doug  Beaver,  Ryan Davis, Pat
  Eyler, Eric Hodel,  Evan Webb, and Aaron  Johnson) for the work they
  did in their code fest.

* Thanks to Paul Duncan for the gem signing patch.

* Thanks to Mark Hubbart for the Mac OS X framework patch.

* Thanks to Doug Kearns for catching some embarassing typos in several
  error messages.

Keep those gems coming!

-- Jim & Chad (for the RubyGems team)
