In this context, an appliance is a ready-to-run virtual machine. No set up to speak of required.

But why? Isn’t it easy to install Ruby wherever you like?

That is very true.

However, the Ruby ecosystem is very *NIX centric. Not everyone has the luxury, or time or ability, to setup and maintain a UNIX-like operating system.

Virtualization and thus appliances turn operating systems into just another kind of program. They reduce the risk of using a different operating system. Further, not everyone using Ruby wants to, or can, dig through C extensions to make them work on their operating system of choice. The hurdles as a Windows user are too high in most cases.

An appliance makes it easier to setup test environments, so they are great for seasoned developers, as well!

You can start with a clean slate, only Ruby, RubyGems, and a compiler tool chain are installed, and you can easily revert to this blank slate at the push of a button. With the different networking tools in today’s VM tools, you can even test network deployment of Rails applications.

So here is my proposal:

To create the best possible Ruby appliance and experience, I want to know which Gems and tools the Ruby community sees as essential to make life as a Rubyist easier.

Submit your ideas, and the Ruby Appliance will benefit and with that, all of the Ruby community.