Rails - Oct 2009 - Best way to share a plugin between different Rails application

Hello list,

Ok, so this issue might be a topic for a design pattern that has already
been discussed a lot around the Rails community, but the information I found
is too disperse, and I would like some specific advice if possible.

I have a project that consists of several Rails applications. Actually we
got this project with the "please save me" metadata. We are
refactoring it
to follow best practices and have a better maintenance factor.

So, each rails app, from the client perspective, is a "module". Each
app
implements a different part of the system, but still needs artifacts from
the others (higher-level artifacts, that are common between all of them),
and here''s where the problem lies, *everything is duplicated* across
all
these apps: models, controllers, helpers, views, migrations. A true
maintenance hell.

So, what I''m politely asking here is, the ways to solve this Wet
problem,
i.e, DRYing it up.

The way I thought to approach the problem so far is to use Rails engine *to
package all the artifacts (models, controllers, migrations, and any other
class/asset) in one Rails plugin. So far so good. It is a good proven
solution, since Rails engine has been around for quite some time and has
proven to work well.

What I still don''t know is how to share this plugin among the apps. I
see
two ways:

1) As a git submodule. So, the plugin would be in vendor/plugins, but as a
git submodule;
2) In a central location, still version-controlled of course, but the
sharing wouldn''t be done via git submoduling, but instead, I would tell
each
application to load this additional plugin from this outside location.

I would like some advice on this, any suggestion/idea is very welcome!

Thanks,

Marcelo.

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> What I still don''t know is how to share this plugin among the
apps.
> I see
> two ways:
>
> 1) As a git submodule. So, the plugin would be in vendor/plugins,  
> but as a
> git submodule;
> 2) In a central location, still version-controlled of course, but the
> sharing wouldn''t be done via git submoduling, but instead, I would
> tell each
> application to load this additional plugin from this outside location.
3) braid. http://github.com/evilchelu/braid

I''m not sure it really matters though...