Over at my Rubygems.org page, I can see changes in the counts when my gems are downloaded.
For one gem, markdown_helper, there are bursts of 26 downloads at irregular intervals. There may be a week between, or just a day.
The most recent update to the gem was December 3, 2018, so I don't have a theory about why there would be these bursts of 26 downloads, grabbing the same version each time.
Any ideas? (Or confession, if you're the mystery downloader?)
Top comments (5)
My theory is that these are Gem aggregator bots running on a schedule. They generally post about new gems to other platforms (e.g. Twitter).
I wonder about this sort of thing. I have a test gem in my account that's been downloaded more than 1000 times (it doesn't do anything).
There must be some processes out there that download gems periodically.
Exactly 26 every time?
Well, they are 'bursts' only in that there's an unusual number of downloads over a very short time. (Yes, I look more often than I'm willing to admit.)
I have a few times seen a few more than 26, which could be just 26 plus some unrelated. But I've seen more 26 more often, and never something in the range 20-25. So 26 seems to be the GLB (greatest lower bound, as we used to say in the calculus).
This phenom was not apparent earlier, b/c when I posted more often, there was more activity possibly acting as a mask. Lately I've posted less, so it's more apparent.
The 26s just keep coming!