GemChecker: Reporting on the Status of Gems in Ruby on Rails Projects

Ruby projects rely on gems, i.e. package libraries which provide a variety of features and functions. Once a package library has been installed onto an application, checking if it has become out of date or if it is poorly maintained can only be done manually for Ruby on Rails projects. This is both error prone and time consuming. Out of date gems can potentially introduce vulnerabilities that may only become obvious at a later stage. In this paper, we introduce GemChecker, a software tool designed to support Ruby on Rails developers in gaining knowledge about the version status of gems installed upon their application. GemChecker is designed to: a) allow queries of the latest version available for a gem, b) summarize the results of checking the versions of all the gems associated with a particular project, and c) support software maintenance tasks by alerting developers of code deprecation in gems used by a particular project, of new versions being released for particular gems, and when a gem used by a particular project is out of date.