[Rubygems-developers] Updating source index is slow

[Chad Fowler]

On 09-Nov-04, at 9:47 PM, Patrick May wrote:

>
> On Tuesday, November 9, 2004, at 02:04  AM, Gavin Sinclair wrote:
>
>> Updating the source index from the rubyforge server is slow.  This
>> could be sped up if there were a pure-Ruby rsync implementation
>> available (for client and server).  Discuss.
>
> Does the rubygems client need the entire source index?  It seems to me 
> that one would be more likely to ask for a list of packages, then 
> drill individually into the metadata for particular pages.
>
> I may be ignorant here -- I'm assuming the client is hitting 
> http://gems.rubyforge.org/yaml
>
>

You're right.  It grabs (and caches) all of the gem metadata.   Your 
idea for a solution might be the most pragmatic (as opposed to 
implementing rsync in ruby ;).

How big an issue does it seem to be?  For me, the gem repository 
doesn't update (and therefore I don't have to redownload the yaml) 
enough to be a serious drag, but I can see how as more gems are 
released it will get more annoying on the client.

Chad