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. Downloads trends of all gems Data points 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: ~2B downloads increase from 2013 to 2019 ~133 B downloads increase from 2019 to 2023 How do I get to these differences: 1.47B downloads in 2013-07-01 and 3.71B downloads in 2019-07-01 => a difference of about 2.24B 3.71B downloads in 2019-07-01 and 137.53B downloads in 2023-07-01 => a difference of about 133.82B Two orders of magnitude increase in the total downloads in the last 4 years versus the previous 5 years. Conclusion: Daily downloads If total downloads increase, so do the daily downloads: daily downloads in 2013 (data point taken on 2013-07-03) 5.75M daily downloads in 2019 (data point taken on 2019-07-03) 50M daily downloads in 2023 (data point taken on 2023-07-11) 127M : 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). Conclusion What does this mean? Tt means the number of downloaded gems has accelerated since 2019. could be running tests using CI pipelines and containers so that for every run, there is a gems download. One explanation Some data points: GitHub launched its Github Actions in 2018 ( ) source Gitlab launched its first version of CI in 2012 ( ) source Jenkins launched in 2011 ( ) source Circle CI launched in 2011 ( ) source Travis CI launched in 2011 ( ) source Almost 30% of businesses were already using CI/CD in 2013-2014 ( ) source 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. could be that Ruby is growing, and the pace is increasing. There could be two root causes for this: Another explanation More frequent version updates for gems result in multiple organizations' teams updating The pace of new projects is increasing 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 ...) we have seen since 2019 - maybe the way data is gathered changed, it is more granular or better captured. There can be other causes for the increase 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. Data validation is not rubygems.org and I could not yet find how they are taking their data. Bestgems.org 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: Maybe a conclusion 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. Join my for weekly Ruby updates from the community. For more Ruby , visit You can also find me on or or where I post mostly about Ruby. Short Ruby News newsletter learning resources . rubyandrails.info Ruby.social Linkedin Twitter Also published . here

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How Ruby Gems Downloads Have Grown from 2013 to 2023

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Lucian Ghinda

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How Ruby Gems Downloads Have Grown from 2013 to 2023

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Lucian Ghinda

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