A Library is simply shared code. Some libraries are distributed with only source, others are only pre-compiled binaries (SWC for ActionScript libraries), and still others are made available in both forms. 

The Sprout::LibraryTask will download and copy a remote library sprout gem.
The remote archive can include (or reference) either source or a pre-compiled
file. For ActionScript libraries, this would be a SWC file.

This task is integrated with some of the compiler tasks in such
a way that if an Sprout::MXMLCTask has any number of library tasks in
it's prerequisites list, each of those libraries will be added
to the compiler directive appropriately.

Following is a simple example of a library task. Using only
this simple task definition, the Adobe corelib library sprout gem
will be downloaded, installed and copied to your Sprout::ProjectModel +lib_dir+.
  
  library :corelib

By adding this named task as a prerequisite to your compilation task,
that SWC will also be added to the Sprout::MXMLCTask +library_path+ parameter.

  mxmlc 'bin/SomeProject.swf' => :corelib

You can also specify a particular library gem version if the library
has changed since your project began.

  library :asunit3 do |t|
    t.version = '3.0.1'
  end

This will ensure that only that particular library version is used for this project.

You may want to refer to a library using a particular task name, but have it
use a different library sprout gem. This can be done using the gem_name parameter
as follows:

  library :asunit do |t|
    t.gem_name = 'sprout-asunit3-library'
  end

This may be useful because now the AsUnit[http://www.asunit.org] sources will be installed to:
  lib/asunit
instead of:
  lib/asunit3
and you can now depend on this library as simply +:asunit+ in your compiler tasks.

You can easily create your own library gems using the Sprout::GemWrapTask and then
refer to them by gem name. 

In order to share your library tasks, you will need to
do one of the following:

* Tell interested developers to manually install your library gem
* Upload your gem to any Rubyforge[http://www.rubyforge.org] project file releases area.
    If your gem name begins with 'sprout-' and ends with '-library', you (and others) can refer to it by only
    the string in between that prefix and suffix. Otherwise, you (and others) will always have
    to set the gem_name parameter to the full name of your custom library.
* Submit your library for inclusion from the ProjectSprouts[http://www.projectsprouts.org] project.
* Add your gem to your own custom gem_server[http://rambleon.org/2007/04/19/creating-your-own-gem-server/], and set up your rakefiles to pull from that server

You can search for all available libraries as follows:
  gem search -r sprout-*library
Only results that begin with 'sprout-' are known, valid libraries.