Directory layout for pure Ruby project

Question

I'm starting to learn ruby. I'm also a day-to-day C++ dev. For C++ projects I usually go with following dir structure

/
 -/bin <- built binaries
 -/build <- build time temporary object (eg. .obj, cmake intermediates)
 -/doc <- manuals and/or Doxygen docs
 -/src
 --/module-1
 --/module-2
 -- non module specific sources, like main.cpp
 - IDE project files (.sln), etc.

What dir layout for Ruby (non-Rails, non-Merb) would you suggest to keep it clean, simple and maintainable?

Answer 1

Bundler includes the necessary infrastructure to generate a gem:

$ bundle gem --coc --mit --test=minitest --exe spider
Creating gem 'spider'...
MIT License enabled in config
Code of conduct enabled in config
      create  spider/Gemfile
      create  spider/lib/spider.rb
      create  spider/lib/spider/version.rb
      create  spider/spider.gemspec
      create  spider/Rakefile
      create  spider/README.md
      create  spider/bin/console
      create  spider/bin/setup
      create  spider/.gitignore
      create  spider/.travis.yml
      create  spider/test/test_helper.rb
      create  spider/test/spider_test.rb
      create  spider/LICENSE.txt
      create  spider/CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md
      create  spider/exe/spider
Initializing git repo in /Users/francois/Projects/spider
Gem 'spider' was successfully created. For more information on making a RubyGem visit https://bundler.io/guides/creating_gem.html

Then, in lib/, you create modules as needed:

lib/
  spider/
    base.rb
  crawler/
    base.rb
  spider.rb
    require "spider/base"
    require "crawler/base"

Read the manual page for bundle gem for details on the --coc, --exe and --mit options.

Answer 2

As of 2011, it is common to use jeweler instead of newgem as the latter is effectively abandoned.

Answer 3

The core structure of a standard Ruby project is basically:

  lib/
    foo.rb
    foo/
  share/
    foo/
  test/
    helper.rb
    test_foo.rb
  HISTORY.md (or CHANGELOG.md)
  LICENSE.txt
  README.md
  foo.gemspec

The share/ is rare and is sometimes called data/ instead. It is for general purpose non-ruby files. Most projects don't need it, but even when they do many times everything is just kept in lib/, though that is probably not best practice.

The test/ directory might be called spec/ if BDD is being used instead of TDD, though you might also see features/ if Cucumber is used, or demo/ if QED is used.

These days foo.gemspec can just be .gemspec --especially if it is not manually maintained.

If your project has command line executables, then add:

  bin/
    foo
  man/
    foo.1
    foo.1.md or foo.1.ronn

In addition, most Ruby project's have:

  Gemfile
  Rakefile

The Gemfile is for using Bundler, and the Rakefile is for Rake build tool. But there are other options if you would like to use different tools.

A few other not-so-uncommon files:

  VERSION
  MANIFEST

The VERSION file just contains the current version number. And the MANIFEST (or Manifest.txt) contains a list of files to be included in the project's package file(s) (e.g. gem package).

What else you might see, but usage is sporadic:

  config/
  doc/ (or docs/)
  script/
  log/
  pkg/
  task/ (or tasks/)
  vendor/
  web/ (or site/)

Where config/ contains various configuration files; doc/ contains either generated documentation, e.g. RDoc, or sometimes manually maintained documentation; script/ contains shell scripts for use by the project; log/ contains generated project logs, e.g. test coverage reports; pkg/ holds generated package files, e.g. foo-1.0.0.gem; task/ could hold various task files such as foo.rake or foo.watchr; vendor/ contains copies of the other projects, e.g. git submodules; and finally web/ contains the project's website files.

Then some tool specific files that are also relatively common:

  .document
  .gitignore
  .yardopts
  .travis.yml

They are fairly self-explanatory.

Finally, I will add that I personally add a .index file and a var/ directory to build that file (search for "Rubyworks Indexer" for more about that) and often have a work directory, something like:

  work/
    NOTES.md
    consider/
    reference/
    sandbox/

Just sort of a scrapyard for development purposes.

Answer 4

@Dentharg: your "include one to include all sub-parts" is a common pattern. Like anything, it has its advantages (easy to get the things you want) and its disadvantages (the many includes can pollute namespaces and you have no control over them). Your pattern looks like this:

- src/
    some_ruby_file.rb:
      require 'spider'
      Spider.do_something

+ doc/

- lib/
  - spider/
      spider.rb:
        $: << File.expand_path(File.dirname(__FILE__))
        module Spider
          # anything that needs to be done before including submodules
        end

        require 'spider/some_helper'
        require 'spider/some/other_helper'
        ...

I might recommend this to allow a little more control:

- src/
    some_ruby_file.rb:
      require 'spider'
      Spider.include_all
      Spider.do_something

+ doc/

- lib
  - spider/
      spider.rb:
        $: << File.expand_path(File.dirname(__FILE__))
        module Spider
          def self.include_all
            require 'spider/some_helper'
            require 'spider/some/other_helper'
            ...
          end
        end

Answer 5

Why not use just the same layout? Normally you won't need build because there's no compilation step, but the rest seems OK to me.

I'm not sure what you mean by a module but if it's just a single class a separate folder wouldn't be necessary and if there's more than one file you normally write a module-1.rb file (at the name level as the module-1 folder) that does nothing more than require everything in module-1/.

Oh, and I would suggest using Rake for the management tasks (instead of make).

Answer 6

I would stick to something similar to what you are familiar with: there's no point being a stranger in your own project directory. :-)

Typical things I always have are lib|src, bin, test.

(I dislike these monster generators: the first thing I want to do with a new project is get some code down, not write a README, docs, etc.!)

Answer 7

So I went with newgem. I removed all unnecessary RubyForge/gem stuff (hoe, setup, etc.), created git repo, imported project into NetBeans. All took 20 minutes and everything's on green. That even gave me a basic rake task for spec files.

Thank you all.