This is one of the final post leading up the the launch of the Build a Ruby Gem Ebook, which is now available for sale in 3 packages, including 14 chapters of code and over 2 hours of screencasts.

This past weekend I added ~ 6,000 words to the existing content. I’m really excited to be nearing the end of the road. I’ve gotten some great feedback since I started and wanted to gather a bit more to finalize the chapter list.

Here’s the chapter list I’m working with so far:

1. Introduction What is a gem? Why build a gem?)
2. File structure of a gem
3. Testing/debugging setup
4. Code implementation of of example gem
5. Versioning
6. Release (how to release? and when to release?)
7. Changelog (What is it? and what to include?)
8. Responsibility of a gem author
9. Loading additional libraries within a gem
10. Command-line utilities
11. Configuration patterns
12. Rails hooks
13. Rails view helpers
14. Rails controller includes
15. Rails Model Includes
16. Rails rake tasks
17. Rails engines (when/why to use?)
18. Open source management
19. Summary

Phew! That’s a lot…so with that in mind, have I covered everything?

Please leave a comment if you’re interested in reading about something I haven’t mentioned.

One of the things I’m most excited about is being able to use real-word examples for each chapter. I learn by reading and writing my own code and really appreciate when a book/post does the same. I’ve tried to do that at every step of the way. Hopefully this will make the book more valuable to you.

I will be in touch in the next few weeks with a sample chapter or two, along with some feature blog posts.