title: How to rename a gem?
body: <p>I have a gem that I want to rename. It is <a href="https://rubygems.org/gems/croptoelie" rel="noreferrer">published on RubyGems</a>. I am mostly concerned about people wanting to update it.</p>
  
  <p>I see two paths, but would really like to hear from people who renamed their gem, how they did this.</p>
  
  <h2>1. turn the old one into a metapackage</h2>
  
  <ul>
  <li>Create a new gem (named <code>smart-cropper</code>)</li>
  <li>Add <code>smart-cropper</code> as a dependency to <code>croptoelie</code> (old gem)</li>
  <li>Remove all lib, bins and other code from <code>croptoelie</code></li>
  </ul>
  
  <p>A problem I see with this, is that it is too transparent, people might not be aware that the gem they use is no longer maintained.</p>
  
  <p>Another problem is that versioning becomes harder: I would have to bump the version of the old "metapackage" each time I released a new version of the renamed (<code>smart-cropper</code>) gem, or people would never get a new version. </p>
  
  <h2>2. throw deprecation warnings</h2>
  
  <p>I could send out a release of the old gem that simply throws deprecation warnings with a message that people should install that new gem.</p>
  
  <p>The problem I see with this is that it can be quite intrusive and might turn people[1] away from the gem altogether.</p>
  
  <p>Are there other options? Is there something built into "RubyGems" to cater for the changing of the name?</p>
  
  <p>[1] not that too many people are using it; because of the name it is hard to find. :)</p>