Publish April 2025 RubyGems Updates

_posts/2025-04-25-march-rubygems-updates.md

@@ -42,7 +42,7 @@ Some other important accomplishments from the team this month include:
 
 ## [RubyGems.org](http://rubygems.org/) News
 
-The updates made this month to [RubyGems.org](http://rubygems.org/) reflect a strong commitment to improving user experience, enhancing security, and modernizing the platform. Sponsored hosting for [RubyGems.org](http://rubygems.org/) in February was provided by [AWS](https://aws.amazon.com/?ref=rubycentral.org), [Fastly](https://www.fastly.com/?ref=rubycentral.org) and [Datadog](https://www.datadoghq.com/?ref=rubycentral.org).
+The updates made this month to [RubyGems.org](http://rubygems.org/) reflect a strong commitment to improving user experience, enhancing security, and modernizing the platform. Sponsored hosting for [RubyGems.org](http://rubygems.org/) in March was provided by [AWS](https://aws.amazon.com/?ref=rubycentral.org), [Fastly](https://www.fastly.com/?ref=rubycentral.org) and [Datadog](https://www.datadoghq.com/?ref=rubycentral.org).
 
 The following are highlights of what the team worked on this month:
 

_posts/2025-05-20-april-rubygems-updates.md

@@ -0,0 +1,92 @@
+---
+title: April 2025 RubyGems Updates
+layout: post
+author: Gift Egwuenu
+author_email: laurandidi21@gmail.com
+---
+
+Welcome to the RubyGems monthly update! As part of our efforts at Ruby Central, we publish a recap of the work that we’ve done the previous month. Read on to find out what updates were made to RubyGems and RubyGems.org in April. 
+
+## RubyGems News
+
+In April, we released RubyGems [**3.6.7**](https://github.com/rubygems/rubygems/blob/master/CHANGELOG.md#367--2025-04-03), [**3.6.8**](https://github.com/rubygems/rubygems/blob/master/CHANGELOG.md#368--2025-04-13) and Bundler [**2.6.7**](https://github.com/rubygems/rubygems/blob/master/bundler/CHANGELOG.md#267-april-3-2025), [**2.6.8**](https://github.com/rubygems/rubygems/blob/master/bundler/CHANGELOG.md#268-april-13-2025). These releases bring a series of enhancements and bug fixes designed to improve the overall developer experience with RubyGems.
+
+Notable improvements include [defaulting to a `SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH` of `315619200`](https://github.com/rubygems/rubygems/pull/8568) to simplify reproducible builds, [sorting gemspec metadata fields](https://github.com/rubygems/rubygems/pull/8569) to support consistent build outputs, [fixing a crash when the compact index API only listed versions](https://github.com/rubygems/rubygems/pull/8594), and [speeding up `Gem::Version#<=>` comparisons by 20–50%](https://github.com/rubygems/rubygems/pull/8565) when version lengths differ.
+
+Some other important accomplishments from the team this month include:
+
+**Progress on gems with precompiled binaries**
+
+- Following community interest and questions about the initial **“wheels” proposal**, We opened a [GitHub discussion](https://github.com/rubygems/rubygems/discussions/8645) to gather feedback and facilitate conversation. We also invited input from members of the **OpenSSF Securing Software Repositories Working Group** to help align Ruby’s approach with best practices from other language ecosystems.
+- We are now focused on collecting ****this feedback into a concrete list of features that will make it easier to use and develop gems with precompiled binaries, guiding the future of RubyGems in this space.
+
+**Development of a Bundler 4 roadmap**
+
+- [The Bundler 4 roadmap has been drafted](https://github.com/rubygems/rubygems/issues/8650), aiming to consolidate over a decade of unreleased improvements and breaking changes into a major release.
+- The plan is to review and discuss all pending changes, allow users to opt-in and provide feedback, and prepare for a big release in December. This marks an important step toward modernizing Bundler while giving the community a clear path forward.
+
+**`bundle doctor` now troubleshoots SSL issues**
+
+- The `bundle doctor` command [now includes a new `--ssl` flag](https://github.com/rubygems/rubygems/pull/8624) to help users diagnose SSL-related issues. This improvement brings the functionality of the previously separate [ruby-ssl-check script](https://github.com/rubygems/ruby-ssl-check) directly into Bundler, making it easier to maintain and more accessible to users.
+- Thanks to [@Edouard-chin](https://github.com/Edouard-chin) for contributing this enhancement by porting the script and integrating it into `bundle doctor`.
+
+![bundle doctor SSL diagnosis output (successful!)](https://res.cloudinary.com/lauragift/image/upload/v1747763260/unnamed_kp477m.png)
+
+## RubyGems.org News
+
+The updates made this month to [RubyGems.org](http://rubygems.org/) reflect a strong commitment to improving user experience, enhancing security, and modernizing the platform. Sponsored hosting for RubyGems.org in April was provided by [AWS](https://aws.amazon.com/?ref=rubycentral.org), [Fastly](https://www.fastly.com/?ref=rubycentral.org) and [Datadog](https://www.datadoghq.com/?ref=rubycentral.org).
+
+**April 2025 RubyGems stats** 
+
+In April 2025, RubyGems.org recorded over **4.15 billion total gem downloads**, a **51% increase** from 2.74 billion in April 2024. This marks the first time in history that monthly gem downloads surpassed the **4 billion mark**, highlighting the continued momentum and growing impact of the Ruby ecosystem. Thanks to all of our partners and sponsors helping this to happen!
+
+Looking at Bundler gem downloads trends, usage data shows a clear shift towards modern Ruby versions:
+
+- **Ruby 3.4**, released in December 2024, already accounts for **13.1%** of Bundler downloads.
+- **Ruby 3.3** rose from **10.4% to 27.9%**, making it the most widely used version.
+- **Ruby 3.2** declined from **28.1% to 21.8%**, while **Ruby 3.1,** which reached EOL in March 2025, fell from **24.8% to 14.1%**.
+- **Ruby 2.7**, EOL since March 2023, dropped from **20.4% to 16.1%**.
+- Older versions (2.6 and below) continued their gradual decline.
+
+These trends reflect a strong migration toward actively maintained, supported Ruby versions. Analytics were powered by ****[Clickhouse](https://clickhouse.com/).
+
+The following are highlights of what the team worked on this month:
+
+**Progress update on organizations**
+
+- Work has resumed on the long-anticipated **Organizations feature** in RubyGems.org, led by [Colby Swandale](https://github.com/colby-swandale). After identifying the remaining functionality a few months ago, we’ve now secured budget to complete the work.
+- The feature is currently being demoed to a small group of beta testers, with plans to open it to the broader community in the future. We’re looking forward to gathering feedback once Organizations becomes publicly available.
+
+## Thank you
+
+A huge thank you to all the contributors to RubyGems and [RubyGems.org](http://rubygems.org/) this month! We deeply appreciate your support and dedication.
+
+### Contributors to RubyGems:
+
+- [@deivid-rodriguez](https://github.com/deivid-rodriguez) David Rodríguez
+- [@Edouard-chin](https://github.com/Edouard-chin) Edouard Chin
+- [@hsbt](https://github.com/hsbt) Hiroshi Shibata
+- [@jeremyevans](https://github.com/jeremyevans) Jeremy Evans
+- [@martinemde](https://github.com/martinemde) Martin Emde
+- [@mperham](https://github.com/mperham) Mike Perham
+- [@nobu](https://github.com/nobu) Nobuyoshi Nakada
+- [@thatrobotdev](https://github.com/thatrobotdev) James Kerrane
+- [@segiddins](https://github.com/segiddins) Samuel Giddins
+- [@simi](https://github.com/simi) Josef Šimánek
+- [@skipkayhil](https://github.com/skipkayhil) Hartley McGuire
+
+### Contributors to [RubyGems.org](http://rubygems.org/):
+
+- [@colby-swandale](https://github.com/colby-swandale) Colby Swandale
+- [@gingerwizard](https://github.com/gingerwizard) Dale McDiarmid
+- [@hsbt](https://github.com/hsbt) Hiroshi Shibata
+- [@indirect](https://github.com/indirect) André Arko
+- [@marcoroth](https://github.com/marcoroth) Marco Roth
+- [@martinemde](https://github.com/martinemde) Martin Emde
+- [@segiddins](https://github.com/segiddins) Samuel Giddins
+- [@simi](https://github.com/simi) Josef Šimánek
+
+*If we missed you, please let us know so we can include you in our shout out!*
+
+---
+Learn more about contributing to RubyGems by visiting the RubyGems Contributing Guide. We welcome all kinds of contributions, including bug fixes, feature implementation, writing and updating documentation, and bug triage.