RubyUI becoming more a ShadCN

[stephannv]

@SethHorsley, I was talking with @cirdes about making RubyUI simpler and distinct. My idea is making RubyUI to work primarily as a component generator that can be used as development dependency than a ui kit that provides components and js package. It will work more like the Shadcn.

I think this approach will make things simpler. Today we need to have a js package and update it, we need to have code that handles if user is using internal components or using generated components, like tailwind config (it checks gem path to get tailwind classes) or stimulus js checking if a controller exists. We need to have gem dependencies like rouge/tailwind-merge. I'm not sure yet, but maybe it can make importmap/esbuild setup easier.

I think RubyUI can be a "eject-only" lib and stand out for it, adding a command like rails g ruby_ui card on each page (like ShadCN). I know that some users will dislike this idea, but we should know what we want, and I think the idea is having a collection of re-usable components that users can copy and paste into their apps, accessible and customizable.

[cirdes]

It's an important decision, but it seems to point to the right direction. I'm feeling that we're facing the "jack of all trades and master of none" dilemma. We're trying to please everyone, but in the end, we're facing complexity that slows us down.

I have been using that approach on ShadCn for a while, and I really like it. Importing that concept to Rails component library aligns with the vision that I believe and also with what @dhh seems to believe

In the future, we can release a wrapper around ruby-ui to make it possible to be used without ejecting the components if we want to support that as well.

Let's speed things up by reducing complexity!

[SethHorsley]

Yes making a wrapper does make sense. I’m completely fine with this.