Ruby%20On%20Rails%20Interview%20Questions%20and%20Answers

Question: WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A PLUGIN AND A GEM in Ruby on Rails?

A gem is just ruby code. It is installed on a machine and it’s available for all ruby applications running on that machine.

Rails, rake, json, rspec — are all examples of gems. 

Plugin is also ruby code but it is installed in the application folder and only available for that specific application. 

Sitemap-generator, etc.

In general, since Rails works well with gems you will find that you would be mostly integrating with gem files and not plugins in general. Most developers release their libraries as gems.