An editorial guide to the Rails gem ecosystem
Gemfile Review looks at the libraries that end up there: what they do, who maintains them, how well they follow Rails releases, and what the sensible alternatives are.
Release numbers and dates come from RubyGems.org and each project's own repository. Every guide links to the primary documentation.
Guides · Before you run bundle add
A practical checklist for judging a Ruby gem: maintenance signals, compatibility with Rails 7 and 8, dependencies, licence, and security advisories with bundler-audit.
The choices most Rails teams face first, and two classics that still turn up in old Gemfiles.
Category guidesPaperTrail, Audited or Logidze: a versions table, an audits table, or a trigger-maintained log in a JSONB column.
Category guidesDiscard adds a discarded_at column and two scopes; Paranoia and acts_as_paranoid override destroy. Which one, and when to skip soft deletes entirely.
Category guidesComparing Rails authentication options in 2026: the Rails 8 authentication generator, Devise, Rodauth, Authlogic, Clearance and Sorcery, plus OmniAuth for social login.
Category guidesHow to choose a background job backend for Rails: Active Job, Solid Queue (the Rails 8 default), Sidekiq, GoodJob, delayed_job and Resque, and what replaced Workling and Spawn.
Category guidesChoosing a file attachment solution for Rails: Active Storage, Shrine and CarrierWave compared, image variants with image_processing, validation, and migrating away from Paperclip.
Category guidesThe Rails testing toolbox in 2026: Minitest or RSpec, fixtures or FactoryBot, system tests with Capybara, shoulda-matchers, and what replaced Webrat, Spork and factory_girl.
Plugin historiesWhat Paperclip did, why thoughtbot deprecated it in 2018, the kt-paperclip fork, and how to migrate Paperclip attachments to Active Storage or Shrine.
Plugin historiesWhat Spork did for RSpec and Cucumber in the Rails 2 and 3 era, why it stopped at 1.0.0rc4, and how Spring, Bootsnap and parallel testing solve the same problem today.
Every guide on the site, by section.
How Rails extensions work, and how to choose, audit and upgrade the gems in your Gemfile.
The main gem choices for each job in a Rails application, compared on maintenance, design and fit.
What the well-known Rails 2 and Rails 3 era plugins did, where they stand today, and what replaced them.