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ADR-0002: Public rebrand to "E2E on Rails"; gem flip is 2.0, scheduled after v1.22

Date: 2026-07-04 Status: Accepted (@justin808) Amends: ADR-0001 (alias mechanics unchanged; brand scope and timing extended)

Context​

ADR-0001 reserved e2e_on_rails as a wrapper gem and deferred all renaming to an unscheduled 2.0, with docs at testing.shakastack.com. A fuller naming evaluation (see docs/roadmap/2026-07-e2e-on-rails-naming-decision.md, adopted 2026-07-04) chose a complete public brand — E2E on Rails — and e2eonrails.com was purchased the same day. Two ambiguities in that document were resolved by the maintainer on 2026-07-04:

  1. Its Phase 2 ("new preferred gem") did not date the gem flip.
  2. Its Phase 1 (repo rename) did not sequence against the pending v1.21.0 release.

Decision​

  1. Brand now: public name E2E on Rails; tagline "The Rails test bridge for Cypress and Playwright."
  2. Domain: e2eonrails.com (purchased) is the canonical docs + landing page at the apex — no docs. subdomain, no defensive domain variants. Supersedes the testing.shakastack.com plan from ADR-0001/roadmap S2. Renewal rule per the naming doc: keep after year one only if it carries real traffic/links; otherwise fold docs back under ShakaCode.
  3. Repo rename to shakacode/e2e-on-rails immediately after v1.21.0 ships (GitHub redirects old URLs), together with the README hero from the naming doc ("Formerly cypress-on-rails") and a sweep of gemspec/badge/ workflow/docs URLs. The v1.21.0 release itself runs under the current name.
  4. Gem flip is 2.0, and 2.0 is scheduled: right after the v1.22 line (hardening #185/#186/#13 + migration guide #220) lands — target ~2–3 months out. At 2.0: code moves to e2e_on_rails, cypress-on-rails becomes the compatibility shim, module renames to E2eOnRails with a CypressOnRails deprecation alias. Until then e2e_on_rails stays the thin wrapper from ADR-0001 (#226) and install instructions keep saying gem 'cypress-on-rails', so cypress-rails migrants experience exactly one rename event.
  5. No gem split (reaffirms closing #24); if a split ever happens it uses the e2e_on_rails-* prefix per the naming doc.

Stats preservation (explicit guarantee, added 2026-07-04)​

Nothing in this rebrand discards accumulated social proof or history:

  • GitHub: the rename (#228, pending — gated on v1.21.0 shipping) must be an in-place GitHub rename — stars, forks, watchers, issues, PRs, and traffic history all carry over, and old URLs/git remotes redirect permanently. Precedent: this repo already renamed once (cypress-on-rails → cypress-playwright-on-rails) and lost nothing. Do NOT create a fresh repo and archive the old one; that WOULD lose stats.
  • RubyGems: cypress-on-rails is never yanked. It remains the real gem through 1.x and the published shim from 2.0 onward, so its ~6.4M download history stays visible and keeps growing (shim installs also pull e2e_on_rails, so the new gem accrues its own count on top). Marketing and README cite the lineage: "6.4M+ downloads as cypress-on-rails".

Consequences​

  • Docs-site work (#221/#222 outputs, migration guide #220) publishes to e2eonrails.com with the IA from the naming doc (/getting-started, /cypress, /playwright, /factory-bot, /fixtures, /scenarios, /app-commands, /migration/from-cypress-on-rails).
  • The v1.22 outreach (#224) leads with the E2E on Rails brand while still instructing gem 'cypress-on-rails' — the guide must say the 2.0 name change is coming and that the shim will keep old Gemfiles working.
  • A 2.0 flip checklist issue tracks the inversion; the wrapper gem (#226) ships with e2eonrails.com metadata so its RubyGems page is on-brand from day one.