Please to announce release code-named "spooky" of fast rubygems. Changelog: added 'frubygems' as an additional require option Synopsis: require 'frubygems' # takes about 1/5th the time of doing a require 'rubygems' Essentially gem_prelude for 1.8 README: A helper to dramatically speedup the time it takes to load rubygems require 'rubygems' no longer has to sap valuable time from your life inspired by a request from Yehuda Katz [1] and 1.9's fast gem_prelude. Speed difference (windows box, lots of gem): $ time ruby examples/require_rubygems_normal.rb real 0m1.109s $ time ruby examples/require_fast_start.rb real 0m0.500s Yea! Finally ruby script startup times that don't spend forever just reloading gem paths. It acts about the same as gem_prelude (prelude is 1.9 only currently) -- adds the paths of the highest version of each gem into your load path so they're ready to be required. == installation == git clone git://github.com/rogerdpack/faster_rubygems.git ruby faster_rubygems/install.rb # done! == usage == instead of require 'rubygems' it's either require 'frubygems.rb' or require 'rubygems_fast.rb' (both do the same thing, first is to save key strokes) in your scripts. If you were really clever I suppose you could figure out how to override the default rubygem behavior to do this, always :) For those interested, speed difference example on linux (250 gems): $ time ruby examples/require_rubygems_normal.rb ruby examples/require_rubygems_normal.rb 0.57s user 0.05s system 85% cpu 0.726 total $ time ruby examples/require_fast_start.rb ruby examples/require_fast_start.rb 0.04s user 0.02s system 46% cpu 0.121 total Note also that a few non conforming gems require the use of require 'rubygems' no matter what (they're pretty rare, though--you probably won't run into them, and I'm not aware of any). Note: you don't need this for ruby 1.9, which already preloads via gem_prelude, but it won't hurt to use it in 1.9--it defaults to a no-op, so doesn't hurt. -- Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.