[Rubygems-developers] Testing for Gems 0.9.0 Beta

[Tom Copeland]

> I wanted to run some ideas by you.  One of the big changes 
> scheduled for 
> RubyGems 0.9.0 is how the gem command downloads the gem index from 
> RubyForge.  Currently, gem grabs the entire wad of gem specs if it 
> detects that the size of the index file has changed.  The new version 
> will incrementally download only those gems that have been 
> updated since 
> the last download.  Hopefully this will cut down download bandwidth a 
> bit and speed up the end user experience.

Hi Jim -

Sounds great!  Yup, I've talked with Rich about this a bit.

> What I would like to do in the near future is give you the 
> new indexing 
> software to run on RubyForge.  After we verify that everything still 
> works for the current gems, I will get a limited number of 
> people to try 
> out the beta gems with incremental downloading and begin to 
> see how that 
> works on a large site like RubyForge.  Once everything looks 
> OK, we can 
> proceed with a RubyGems release.

Super!  Send it onwards and I'll put it in place.

> I think the above approach will get everything in place with 
> the minimum 
> disruption to the gem users.  I don't know how this will play 
> with your 
> mirror sites however.

I think it'll be fine - we only redirect requests for the actual gems to
the mirror sites; RubyForge serves up the index.  So should be same ole'
same ole'.... underway as before and all that.

Yours,

Tom