From: David Masover <ninja@...>
Date: 2009-11-30T04:33:12+09:00
Subject: Re: Best way to distribute an app

On Saturday 28 November 2009 09:03:12 pm Omar Campos wrote:
> what is the best way to distribute and deploy a ruby
> application, especially if it requires external modules?

Two main ways: As a gem, or as a git repository.

As a git repository is helpful if by "deploy" you mean "push to a webserver", 
in which case, I suggest you look into Capistrano. As a gem is mostly useful 
for other developers, but you get all the advantages of a package manager -- 
dependencies, seamless upgrades, installing/uninstalling handled for you...

> I program mostly in Windows.

Ah... is it a desktop application?

In that case, there are a few options. I like rawr. But there are ways to bake 
gems into your app, and once you've done that, it's just a question of finding 
an installer that'll put your app folder on their hard drive, and give them a 
way to launch it.

But seriously, rawr looks awesome, if your app can run in JRuby:

http://rawr.rubyforge.org/