💎 Them::Server

if ci_badges.map(&:color).detect { it != "green"} ☝️ let me know, as I may have missed the discord notification.

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if ci_badges.map(&:color).all? { it == "green"} 👇️ send money so I can do more of this. FLOSS maintenance is now my full-time job.

👣 How will this project approach the September 2025 hostile takeover of RubyGems? 🚑️

I've summarized my thoughts in this blog post.

🌻 Synopsis

💡 Info you can shake a stick at

Tokens to Remember
Works with JRuby
Works with Truffle Ruby
Works with MRI Ruby 4
Works with MRI Ruby 3
Support & Community
Source
Documentation
Compliance
Style
Maintainer 🎖️
... 💖	🧊 🐙 🛖 🧪

Compatibility

Compatible with MRI Ruby 3.2.0+, and concordant releases of JRuby, and TruffleRuby. CI workflows and Appraisals are generated for MRI Ruby 3.2.0+. This test floor is configured by ruby.test_minimum in .kettle-jem.yml and may be higher than the gem's runtime compatibility floor when legacy Rubies are not practical for the current toolchain.

🚚 Amazing test matrix was brought to you by	🔎 appraisal2 🔎 and the color 💚 green 💚
👟 Check it out!	✨ github.com/appraisal-rb/appraisal2 ✨

Federated DVCS

Find this repo on federated forges (Coming soon!)

Federated DVCS Repository	Status	Issues	PRs	Wiki	CI	Discussions
🧪 rubythems/them-server on GitLab	The Truth	💚	💚	💚	🐭 Tiny Matrix	➖
🧊 rubythems/them-server on CodeBerg	An Ethical Mirror (Donate)	💚	💚	➖	⭕️ No Matrix	➖
🐙 rubythems/them-server on GitHub	Another Mirror	💚	💚	💚	💯 Full Matrix	💚
🎮️ Discord Server		Let's	talk	about	this	library!

Enterprise Support

Available as part of the Tidelift Subscription.

Need enterprise-level guarantees?

The maintainers of this and thousands of other packages are working with Tidelift to deliver commercial support and maintenance for the open source packages you use to build your applications. Save time, reduce risk, and improve code health, while paying the maintainers of the exact packages you use.

• 💡Subscribe for support guarantees covering all your FLOSS dependencies
• 💡Tidelift is part of Sonar
• 💡Tidelift pays maintainers to maintain the software you depend on!
  📊@Pointy Haired Boss: An enterprise support subscription is "never gonna let you down", and supports open source maintainers

Alternatively:

• 
• 
• 

✨ Installation

Install the gem and add to the application's Gemfile by executing:

bundle add them-server

If bundler is not being used to manage dependencies, install the gem by executing:

gem install them-server

⚙️ Configuration

🔧 Basic Usage

Run a single server locally

# Install deps
bundle install

# Migrate and (optionally) seed
bundle exec rake db:migrate
bundle exec rake db:seed   # adds localhost peers for demo: 9292, 9393

# Start the app
bundle exec rackup -p 2300 -E development --host 0.0.0.0

Browse or manage

• List gems in root: http://localhost:2300/
• Download scoped or root gems via GET as implemented in Phase 1
• Admin UI: http://localhost:2300/admin (HTML)
  • Toggle peers via the UI; JSON endpoints also available:
    • GET /admin/known_servers
    • POST /admin/known_servers/toggle (body: {base_url, subscribed})
  • Metrics: GET /admin/federation/metrics

Federation basics

• Announce yourself to a peer (signed):

# my_base_url can be provided via ENV FEDERATION_BASE_URL too
bundle exec rake federation:announce['http://peer.example']

• Subscribe to a peer (signed):

bundle exec rake federation:subscribe['http://peer.example']

• Broadcast a stubbed gem record to all subscribed peers:

# Temporarily enables FEDERATION_BROADCAST=1; does not modify your real gems
bundle exec rake federation:broadcast_stub['demo','0.1.0','scope/subscope']

Two-server local demo (no containers)

# This starts two rack servers on :9292 and :9393 with separate DBs, wires them via federation,
# and prints their known server lists at the end.
bin/demo_federation.sh

Container demo (docker-compose)

# Build and spin up two servers and a small wiring helper
docker compose up --build

# After it settles you can inspect from the host:
curl http://localhost:9292/admin/known_servers | jq .
curl http://localhost:9393/admin/known_servers | jq .

Environment controls

• THEM_SERVER_DB: path to the SQLite DB (default: config/db/them_server.db). Set to run multiple instances side-by-side.
• FEDERATION_BASE_URL: the base URL this server advertises in federation payloads.
• FEDERATION_BROADCAST: set to "1" to broadcast new gem pushes to subscribed peers.
• FEDERATION_PRIVATE_KEY_B64/FEDERATION_PUBLIC_KEY_B64: optional Ed25519 keypair to use a stable identity.

🦷 FLOSS Funding

While rubythems tools are free software and will always be, the project would benefit immensely from some funding. Raising a monthly budget of... "dollars" would make the project more sustainable.

We welcome both individual and corporate sponsors! We also offer a wide array of funding channels to account for your preferences. Currently, GitHub Sponsors, and Liberapay are our preferred funding platforms.

If you're working in a company that's making significant use of rubythems tools we'd appreciate it if you suggest to your company to become a rubythems sponsor.

You can support the development of rubythems tools via GitHub Sponsors, Liberapay, PayPal, and Tidelift.

📍 NOTE
If doing a sponsorship in the form of donation is problematic for your company from an accounting standpoint, we'd recommend the use of Tidelift, where you can get a support-like subscription instead.

Another way to support open-source

I’m driven by a passion to foster a thriving open-source community – a space where people can tackle complex problems, no matter how small. Revitalizing libraries that have fallen into disrepair, and building new libraries focused on solving real-world challenges, are my passions. I was recently affected by layoffs, and the tech jobs market is unwelcoming. I’m reaching out here because your support would significantly aid my efforts to provide for my family, and my farm (11 🐔 chickens, 2 🐶 dogs, 3 🐰 rabbits, 8 🐈‍ cats).

If you work at a company that uses my work, please encourage them to support me as a corporate sponsor. My work on gems you use might show up in bundle fund.

I’m developing a new library, floss_funding, designed to empower open-source developers like myself to get paid for the work we do, in a sustainable way. Please give it a look.

Floss-Funding.dev: 👉️ No network calls. 👉️ No tracking. 👉️ No oversight. 👉️ Minimal crypto hashing. 💡 Easily disabled nags

🔐 Security

See SECURITY.md.

🤝 Contributing

If you need some ideas of where to help, you could work on adding more code coverage, or if it is already 💯 (see below) check issues or PRs, or use the gem and think about how it could be better.

We so if you make changes, remember to update it.

See CONTRIBUTING.md for more detailed instructions.

🚀 Release Instructions

See CONTRIBUTING.md.

Code Coverage

Coverage service badges

🪇 Code of Conduct

Everyone interacting with this project's codebases, issue trackers, chat rooms and mailing lists agrees to follow the .

🌈 Contributors

Made with contributors-img.

Also see GitLab Contributors: https://gitlab.com/rubythems/them-server/-/graphs/main

⭐️ Star History

📌 Versioning

This library follows for its public API where practical. For most applications, prefer the Pessimistic Version Constraint with two digits of precision.

For example:

spec.add_dependency("them-server", "~> 0.0")

📌 Is "Platform Support" part of the public API? More details inside.

Dropping support for a platform can be a breaking change for affected users. If a release changes supported platforms, it should be called out clearly in the changelog and versioned with that impact in mind.

To get a better understanding of how SemVer is intended to work over a project's lifetime, read this article from the creator of SemVer:

• "Major Version Numbers are Not Sacred"

See CHANGELOG.md for a list of releases.

📄 License

The gem is available as open source under the terms of the MIT .

© Copyright

See LICENSE.md for the official copyright notice.

Copyright holders

• Copyright (c) 2025-2026 Peter H. Boling

🤑 A request for help

Maintainers have teeth and need to pay their dentists. After getting laid off in an RIF in March, and encountering difficulty finding a new one, I began spending most of my time building open source tools. I'm hoping to be able to pay for my kids' health insurance this month, so if you value the work I am doing, I need your support. Please consider sponsoring me or the project.

To join the community or get help 👇️ Join the Discord.

To say "thanks!" ☝️ Join the Discord or 👇️ send money.

💌 💌

Please give the project a star ⭐ ♥.

Many parts of this project are actively managed by a kettle-jem smart template utilizing StructuredMerge.org merge contracts.

Thanks for RTFM. ☺️

Field	Value
Package	them-server
Description	💎 A Federated Server of Ruby Gems
Homepage	https://github.com/rubythems/them-server
Source	https://github.com/rubythems/them-server/tree/v0.1.0
License	MIT
Funding	https://github.com/sponsors/pboling, https://issuehunt.io/u/pboling, https://ko-fi.com/pboling, https://liberapay.com/pboling/donate, https://patreon.com/galtzo, https://polar.sh/pboling, https://thanks.dev/u/gh/pboling, https://tidelift.com/funding/github/rubygems/them-server, https://www.buymeacoffee.com/pboling