While creating the Short Ruby Newsletter, I discovered bestgems.org, and I noticed there was an interesting graph that I would like to discuss a bit.
Here is how I read this; first there are two data sets: the total downloads and the daily downloads
Total downloads
It is a sum of downloads of all gems -> so of course, this will always be increasing.
But what I think is interesting is how fast the total downloads are increasing. I think it can be seen with the naked eye that starting with, say 2019/2020, the total downloads are increasing a lot:
How do I get to these differences:
Conclusion: Two orders of magnitude increase in the total downloads in the last 4 years versus the previous 5 years.
Daily downloads
If total downloads increase, so do the daily downloads:
Conclusion: the number of downloads per day is more than double, with some periods from 2019 until 2023 with a higher number of downloads per day (like 160M or 154M).
Tt means the number of downloaded gems has accelerated since 2019.
One explanation could be running tests using CI pipelines and containers so that for every run, there is a gems download.
Some data points:
I assume these features took off the next year, so it would be 2019 for GitHub and 2013 for Gitlab and the other major CIs in 2012.
It is hard to know if this explanation is the only one. I don't feel it is accounting for all the fast growth since 2019. The only data point that matches that is Github launching their Actions in 2019, but that alone cannot explain the increase of two orders of magnitude since then.
Another explanation could be that Ruby is growing, and the pace is increasing. There could be two root causes for this:
Again, it is hard to know exactly which one is the reality. But I add this explanation that Ruby is growing because I see signs of it also in other places (more conferences, more talk on social media, an increased number of articles, more releases, more jobs, more contacts on Linkedin about jobs ...)
There can be other causes for the increase we have seen since 2019 - maybe the way data is gathered changed, it is more granular or better captured.
I think it is a combination of both explanations - CI being adopted on a large scale while also the Ruby number of projects growing more rapidly in the last 3-4 years.
Bestgems.org is not rubygems.org and I could not yet find how they are taking their data.
Still, when looking at the total number of downloads (see the comparison image below), it seems to have the same data, so I wrote this article starting with the assumption that bestgems.org data is valid.
On the other hand, ruby-toolbox.com is using bestgems.org as a data source:
The rapid increase in Ruby gem downloads since 2019 can be attributed to the widespread adoption of CI/CD pipelines (with a small note that a lot of CI/CD tools were launched years before) and also to the growing popularity of Ruby in new projects.
This trend reflects the growing importance of Ruby in the software development ecosystem.
I hope you enjoyed this article.
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