Rails::Plugin is nothing more than a Rails::Engine, but since it’s loaded too late in the boot process, it does not have the same configuration powers as a bare Rails::Engine.
Opposite to Rails::Railtie and Rails::Engine, you are not supposed to inherit from Rails::Plugin. Rails::Plugin is automatically configured to be an engine by simply placing inside vendor/plugins. Since this is done automatically, you actually cannot declare a Rails::Engine inside your Plugin, otherwise it would cause the same files to be loaded twice. This means that if you want to ship an Engine as gem it cannot be used as plugin and vice-versa.
Besides this conceptual difference, the only difference between Rails::Engine and Rails::Plugin is that plugins automatically load the file “init.rb” at the plugin root during the boot process.
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# File railties/lib/rails/plugin.rb, line 29 def self.all(list, paths) plugins = [] paths.each do |path| Dir["#{path}/*"].each do |plugin_path| plugin = new(plugin_path) next unless list.include?(plugin.name) || list.include?(:all) if global_plugins.include?(plugin.name) warn "WARNING: plugin #{plugin.name} from #{path} was not loaded. Plugin with the same name has been already loaded." next end global_plugins << plugin.name plugins << plugin end end plugins.sort_by do |p| [list.index(p.name) || list.index(:all), p.name.to_s] end end
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# File railties/lib/rails/plugin.rb, line 21 def self.global_plugins @global_plugins ||= [] end
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# File railties/lib/rails/plugin.rb, line 25 def self.inherited(base) raise "You cannot inherit from Rails::Plugin" end
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# File railties/lib/rails/plugin.rb, line 55 def initialize(root) @name = File.basename(root).to_sym config.root = root end
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# File railties/lib/rails/plugin.rb, line 60 def config @config ||= Engine::Configuration.new end
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# File railties/lib/rails/plugin.rb, line 51 def railtie_name name.to_s end