installing gems vs installing plugins?

[mixplate]

are they the same? i am somewhat confused by the terminalogy.

all i know is that gems get updated sometimes so one must freeze their
application so new versions of the gem dont break anything in the rails
application.

plugins can be packaged as gems but whats the difference between
'install gem gem-name' vs 'install plugin plugin name'?

--
Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.

[Zack Chandler]

Gems live in a directory like /usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/ and can be
shared/used by any rails app.
Plugins are installed into a sub-directory of your rails app at
/vendor/plugins. A plugin can only be used in the rails app it is
installed in.

Hope this helps,

--
Zack Chandler
http://depixelate.com

[_Kevin]

I prefer to think of gems as being code used to extend Ruby, while
plugins extend the functionality of Rails.

_Kevin