RailsPlugins.net launched
I found it cumbersome to search the net for Ruby on Rails plugins that I need, every time I start a new Rails project. Today I launched a new website:
This is an index of Ruby on Rails plugins. There is nothing on it yet, so if you have a plugin, please submit it. 
This website was written in less than 24 hours in Ruby on Rails.
As with every index site, you can rate each plugin and post comments. This website also has a unique feature: favorites. Each plugin that you rate is automatically added to your favorites list (under the assumption that one only rates plugins he/she uses). The plugins that you have given the highest ratings will show up on top of your favorites list. So if there are plugins that you use over and over again, give them a high rating and you can easily find them by going to railsplugins.net.
Christoph said,
May 18, 2007 @ 4:07 pm
You know, http://agilewebdevelopment.com/plugins do you?
Chad said,
May 18, 2007 @ 4:14 pm
I run a site http://rubyfurnace.com/ that has been doing basically this as an aggregate of agilewebdev and the same type of thing for rubygems for several months now. Very cool stuff. I would most definitely recommend looking at agilewebdevelopment.com/plugins though
Gabe said,
May 20, 2007 @ 5:11 pm
Personally the thought of a ‘fork’ of http://agilewebdevelopment.com/plugins kind of bothers me. Right now it’s the one central place to register and find plugins. If people start to adopt this new one then it’s just two places I have to look. I’d much rather see feature requests go to Ben. The site is actually quite usable already, but maybe it could be improved.
Also, Hongli, you’re doing some awesome work with ActiveRecord and other core issues which I’d hate to see slow down for a side project such as this.
Hongli said,
May 20, 2007 @ 8:09 pm
Actually I made this site because I didn’t know about agilewebdevelopment.com :/ Oh well, it was a good exercise. At least now I can use it to impress my non-Ruby on Rails-using friends by telling them that I made this in less than 24 hours.
Thanks for the concern. Right now I’m kinda stuck though, the discussion seems to have halted and I don’t know why, or whether the core team is interested. I spoke to some people on #rubyonrails and they said that I shouldn’t try to send patches and that I should write a plugin instead, and that that’s how people contribute to Rails – by creating plugins instead of patches. But since my changes dive deep into ActiveRecord internals I’d rather submit a patch. I was told “who cares, it’s Ruby, patching methods is easy” but I don’t agree with that. Just because something is easy and possible doesn’t mean that it should be done.
The people on rubyonrails-core also seem to be somewhat skeptical about the advantages of prepared statements. Right now I’m looking for benchmarks and hard evidence that prove the use of prepared statements is advantageous, but so far I can’t seem to find any. Many people outside the Ruby on Rails world say that prepared statements are faster and that one should use them, but I’m really having a hard time finding hard evidence to back up that claim. If you know any, I would greatly appreciate it if you could tell me.