Rails plugins: what became of the classics
Around 2010, the Rails community was moving from vendor/plugins to gems managed by Bundler, and from Rails 2.3 to Rails 3. Many popular plugins made the jump; others stopped at Rails 2 and were replaced. This section keeps track of what happened to them.
Each note below describes what the plugin did, gives its last release as recorded on RubyGems.org, and points to what a new application would use instead. If you are maintaining an older application, the notes should also help you decide whether a dependency needs replacing before an upgrade.
Plugin notes
- Spork
A test server that preloaded Rails for RSpec and Cucumber. No release since 2012; Rails' own Spring and Bootsnap took over its job.
- Authlogic
A minimal authentication library that is still maintained, alongside Devise, Rodauth and the Rails 8 authentication generator.
- Webrat
Acceptance testing by simulating a browser in Ruby. Last released in 2011; Capybara and Rails system tests replaced it.
- Paperclip
The best-known attachment library of its era, deprecated by its maintainers in favour of Active Storage.
- Geokit-rails
Distance queries and geocoding for Active Record models. Still released, with Geocoder and PostGIS as alternatives.
- acts_as_list
Ordered lists of records, extracted from Rails core in Rails 2.0 and still maintained today.
Other old plugins, by category
Most plugins of the period fall into a handful of jobs that every application still needs. If you are looking for a plugin that is not listed above, the category guides cover its modern equivalents:
| If the old Gemfile had… | Read |
|---|---|
| restful_authentication, Clearance, Devise 1.x, Facebooker, devise_facebook_connect | Authentication gems |
| CanCan, declarative_authorization | Authorization gems |
| delayed_job, Workling, Spawn, BackgrounDRb | Background jobs |
| attachment_fu, Paperclip, CarrierWave | File uploads |
| will_paginate | Pagination |
| ActiveScaffold, admin_data | Admin panels |
| factory_girl, Machinist, Shoulda, Webrat | Testing |
| Searchlogic, MetaSearch, acts_as_solr, Ferret | Search |
For the background on why plugins disappeared as a distribution format, read From plugins to gems and engines. Before adding any gem, old or new, the checklist in How to evaluate a Rails gem is a good place to start.