= Faster Rubygems =

A helper gem to dramatically speedup the time it takes to startup a ruby script.

i.e. it makes it so that requiring rubygems no longer takes as long.

Speed difference (a demo gem script, ruby 1.8 windows mingw):

normal rubygems:

  $ timer ruby whichr
  0.83s

with faster_rubygems:

  $ timer ruby whichr
  0.19s

Yea!

It acts like a beefed up version of gem_prelude (prelude is 1.9 only currently), with a bit more cacheing thrown in there.

It makes even more of a difference when used with 1.9 on windows:

normal rubygems:

  $ timer ruby whichr
  3.8s

with faster_rubygems:

  $ timer ruby whichr
  0.24s

== installation ==

$ gem install faster_rubygems

now there is a manual step that must be followed:

1.9

  Set this environment variable:
  RUBYOPT=-rfaster_rubygems --disable-gems

1.8:
  Installs itself by default.
  
  
Note that full rubygems will still be loaded when necessary (for example when installing new gems).  This is automatic.


== Rails ==

Unfortunately this gem does not greatly speed up rails--it speeds up any script that 
doesn't require full rubygems (which is most, but not rails).

If you want to speed up rails, you'll want to use the faster_require gem 
(though they do work together splendidly). http://github.com/rdp/faster_require

See http://github.com/rdp/faster_rubygems/blob/master/benchmarks.txt for a full breakdown and more benchmarks.

== Trouble Shooting ==

# if you wish to revert back to normal rubygems, do the following:
>> require 'rubygems'
>> require 'faster_rubygems/unoverride'

If all else fails in this process (it has typically worked fine), you can 
reinstall normal rubygems by downloading its package (.tgz) and running ruby setup.rb within it.


To regenerate cache files (should never really be necessary, but if you for some reason think yours are stale) do the following:

>> require 'rubygems'
>> require 'faster_rubygems/create_cache_for_all'

Most of the credit for this gem goes to gem prelude.

== Related projects ==

rubygems (of course)
http://github.com/fabien/minigems/tree/master
1.9's gem_prelude
http://www.ruby-forum.com/topic/191673
the Builder gem

Source/feedback:

http://www.github.com/rdp/faster_rubygems