Sign Up

Sign Up to our social questions and Answers Engine to ask questions, answer people’s questions, and connect with other people.

Have an account? Sign In

Have an account? Sign In Now

Sign In

Login to our social questions & Answers Engine to ask questions answer people’s questions & connect with other people.

Sign Up Here

Forgot Password?

Don't have account, Sign Up Here

Forgot Password

Lost your password? Please enter your email address. You will receive a link and will create a new password via email.

Have an account? Sign In Now

You must login to ask a question.

Forgot Password?

Need An Account, Sign Up Here

Please briefly explain why you feel this question should be reported.

Please briefly explain why you feel this answer should be reported.

Please briefly explain why you feel this user should be reported.

Sign InSign Up

The Archive Base

The Archive Base Logo The Archive Base Logo

The Archive Base Navigation

  • SEARCH
  • Home
  • About Us
  • Blog
  • Contact Us
Search
Ask A Question

Mobile menu

Close
Ask a Question
  • Home
  • Add group
  • Groups page
  • Feed
  • User Profile
  • Communities
  • Questions
    • New Questions
    • Trending Questions
    • Must read Questions
    • Hot Questions
  • Polls
  • Tags
  • Badges
  • Buy Points
  • Users
  • Help
  • Buy Theme
  • SEARCH
Home/ Questions/Q 525113
In Process

The Archive Base Latest Questions

Editorial Team
  • 0
Editorial Team
Asked: May 13, 20262026-05-13T08:38:16+00:00 2026-05-13T08:38:16+00:00

When it comes to adding gems/plugins I notice that sometimes the author name is

  • 0

When it comes to adding gems/plugins I notice that sometimes the author name is prepended to the gem/plugin name, whereas other times it isn’t. Is there any reasoning behind this?

Example:

config.gem "thoughtbot-factory_girl", :source => "http://gems.github.com"

Why not have it as:

config.gem "factory_girl", :source => "http://gems.github.com"

When do you differentiate between the two?

  • 1 1 Answer
  • 0 Views
  • 0 Followers
  • 0
Share
  • Facebook
  • Report

Leave an answer
Cancel reply

You must login to add an answer.

Forgot Password?

Need An Account, Sign Up Here

1 Answer

  • Voted
  • Oldest
  • Recent
  • Random
  1. Editorial Team
    Editorial Team
    2026-05-13T08:38:16+00:00Added an answer on May 13, 2026 at 8:38 am

    When GitHub used to auto-build and host gems, they enforced a namespacing scheme by username. This is why github gems are prefixed with a username. GitHub embraces forking projects; hence the need for the prefixed usernames. GitHub was never really a good place for the canonical gem names, so they decided to drop their automatic gem hosting* when Gemcutter launched. Since then, even the original host of canonical gems, RubyForge, stopped hosting gems in favor of Gemcutter. Gemcutter is now the canonical source for all gems.

    To make this easy for everyone, http://gems.rubyforge.org now points to http://gemcutter.org.

    *GitHub announced that they would continue to host all old username namespaced gems for at least one more year.


    With regards to factory_girl, that too is now hosted on Gemcutter. Your config only needs to look like this now:

    config.gem "factory_girl"
    

    …but I suggest also adding a version number for your projects (you’ll thank me when you come back to a stale project later):

    config.gem "factory_girl", :version => "1.2.3"
    
    • 0
    • Reply
    • Share
      Share
      • Share on Facebook
      • Share on Twitter
      • Share on LinkedIn
      • Share on WhatsApp
      • Report

Sidebar

Explore

  • Home
  • Add group
  • Groups page
  • Communities
  • Questions
    • New Questions
    • Trending Questions
    • Must read Questions
    • Hot Questions
  • Polls
  • Tags
  • Badges
  • Users
  • Help
  • SEARCH

Footer

© 2021 The Archive Base. All Rights Reserved
With Love by The Archive Base

Insert/edit link

Enter the destination URL

Or link to existing content

    No search term specified. Showing recent items. Search or use up and down arrow keys to select an item.