Rails plugins have been a great tool to have around; just look at the amazing number of plugins that have popped up over the last couple of years; great ideas from all over the place. Plugins are so easy to put together and distribute that many people who’ve never released software before

They also have some pretty serious flaws. There’s no built-in versioning or Rails version requirements. There’s no dependency resolution. There’s no real metadata or built-in search functionality.