Separate into "core" and "cli" gems?

[mdub]

Some users might find the stackup CLI handy; others may just want to use the Stackup::Stack abstraction, without the overhead of the gems that support the CLI (clamp, diffy, multi_json).

Should we split this into separate gems? I was thinking:

• stackup-core - the core Ruby API
• stackup-cli - the CLI

@kunday? @lukeck?

[lukeck]

Sounds like a good idea but I think diffing templates should be part of the core API.

[mdub]

@lukeck Oh, really? The thing is, the way we "diff templates" is actually just to diff the JSON or YAML representations of the templates ... in other words, it's quite tightly bound to the "presentation" layer in the "stackup" CLI.

As a compromise, how about we extract the diff-ing so that it can be used programmatically, even if it is in the "cli" gem rather than the "core" gem?

[lukeck]

So why not just push that presentation layer down into the core too? It would be convenient to be able to have the JSON and YAML representations available when not using the CLI too.

[mdub]

@lukeck well, it undermines the purpose of the split; we'd have to pull the diffy gem into core.

Actually, I'm going off this whole split idea. All of the "extra" gems (clamp, console_logger, diffy, multi_json) and pretty small, and none bring additional dependencies, so we wouldn't win much.