From: Mauricio Fernandez Date: 2007-01-29T20:54:26+09:00 Subject: [ANN] FastRI 0.3.0: standalone mode (qri, DRb not needed), additional search methods, extended class info FastRI is an alternative to the ri documentation browser for Ruby. As of 0.3.0, FastRI can operate in standalone mode (without using a DRb server, see below), so it can now fully replace ri for most intents and purposes. Why prefer it over ri? FastRI * actually works * is *much* faster than ri * can perform fast full-text searching over all your rdoc documentation * is smarter than ri, and can find classes anywhere in the hierarchy without specifying the "full path" * can be told to use different search strategies (completion, nested namespaces, etc.) * supports RubyGems much better than ri, and knows which gem a method/class came from * can serve RI documentation over DRb Getting it ========== Additional information, tarballs... at http://eigenclass.org/hiki.rb?fastri FastRI can be installed with RubyGems: gem install fastri (if you get an old version/a 404 error, please allow some time after the release until the package propagates to the RubyForge mirrors). Please read below for an important note regarding the RubyGems packages. User-visible changes since version 0.2.1 (2006-11-23) ===================================================== * get all the information about a class/module and its methods with --extended * new search methods: complete namespace (-Om), partial completion on both namespace and method name (-Of), and case-indep. variants. * --local (-L) and --remote (-L) (default) options. --local makes fri operate in standalone mode, without requiring fastri-server. * new executable: qri, equivalent to fri -L (local, standalone mode) * try to second-guess the correct method type if all search methods fail and the type was explicitly given Usage ===== Starting from 0.3.0, fri can be used in either local mode (--local, -L) or remote mode (using a fastri-server, -R, --remote). By default, fri will run in remote mode. There's a new executable named qri that defaults to local mode (it behaves otherwise identically to fri). Remote mode is slightly faster (typically about 150ms) , since the documentation index is kept in memory and needs not be read from disk. Local mode ---------- $ qri Array ----------------------------------------------------------- Class: Array Arrays are ordered, integer-indexed collections of any object. Array indexing starts at 0, as in C or Java. A negative index is ... $ qri compact ---------------------------------------------------------- Array#compact array.compact -> an_array ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Returns a copy of self with all nil elements removed. Remote mode ----------- There are two parts to using FastRI in remote mode: * the server: fastri-server * the client: fri FastRI uses a Rinda Ring to allow servers to be discovered automatically without needing to indicate the DRb URIs manually. It can work across machines if you make sure the ring server is bound to the correct interface, and the ACL permissions are correct. Running in remote mode: $ fastri-server (creates the index on the first run, blocks) Later, (times measured with a cold cache): $ time ruby bin/fri -f plain Array#fetch ------------------------------------------------------------ Array#fetch array.fetch(index) -> obj [...] real 0m0.287s (real 0m0.127s with a hot cache) user 0m0.048s sys 0m0.008s Compare to: $ time ri -T -f plain Array#fetch ------------------------------------------------------------ Array#fetch [...] real 0m10.136s (real ~ 1.5s with a hot cache) user 0m1.140s sys 0m0.464s This illustrates FastRI's ability to locate classes deep in the class hierarchy: $ fri Base ------------------------------------------------------ Multiple choices: ActionMailer::Base, ActionView::Base, ActionWebService::API::Base, ActionWebService::Base, ActionWebService::Client::Base, ActiveRecord::Base, MapReduce::ActiveRecord::Base, RSS::Maker::Base, Scruffy::Components::Base, Scruffy::Formatters::Base, Scruffy::Layers::Base, Scruffy::Renderers::Base, Scruffy::Themes::Base $ fri Themes::Base ------------------------------------------- Class: Scruffy::Themes::Base Scruffy::Themes::Base Author: Brasten Sager Date: August 14th, 2006 Compare to $ ri Themes::Base .... several seconds later ... Nothing known about Themes::Base A small note about RubyGems + FastRI. ===================================== RubyGems adds a noticeable overhead to fri, making it run slower than if you installed it directly from the tarball with setup.rb. Compare the execution time when installed with RubyGems: $ time fri -f plain String > /dev/null real 0m0.385s user 0m0.244s sys 0m0.036s to the time fri actually takes to run, without the overhead introduced by RubyGems: $ time ruby bin/fri -f plain String > /dev/null real 0m0.088s user 0m0.040s sys 0m0.008s If you care about those extra 300ms (and there are situations where they will matter, e.g. when using fri for method completion), get FastRI from the tarballs. License ======= FastRI is licensed under the same terms as Ruby. See LICENSE. Feedback ======== Bug reports, patches, comments... are appreciated. You can contact the author via . Please add "fastri" to the subject in order to bypass the spam filters. -- Mauricio Fernandez - http://eigenclass.org - singular Ruby