# FastRI 0.1.1 (fast+smart ri docs searching): configurable se

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/fastri-0-1-1-fast-smart-ri-docs-searching-configurable-se/75500>\
**Category:** Ruby\
**Created:** [November 10, 2006, 12:31pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/fastri-0-1-1-fast-smart-ri-docs-searching-configurable-se/75500 "2006-11-10T12:31:57Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![tulkas](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/t/5daacb/32.png) [@tulkas](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/tulkas)\
**Post date:** [November 10, 2006, 12:31pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/fastri-0-1-1-fast-smart-ri-docs-searching-configurable-se/75500/1 "2006-11-10T12:31:57Z")

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FastRI is an alternative to the ri command-line tool. It is _much_  
faster, and  
also allows you to offer RI lookup services over DRb. FastRI is smarter  
than  
ri, and can find classes anywhere in the hierarchy without specifying  
the  
“full path”. Its RubyGems support is better than ri’s, and it knows  
which gem  
a method/class definition came from.

# Getting it

Additional information, tarballs… at  
[eigenclass.org](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.

Release information and change summary:  
[eigenclass.org](http://eigenclass.org/hiki.rb?fastri+0.1.1)

# Usage

There are two parts to FastRI:

- 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.

# Examples

$ 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 S.

```
  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 [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid). Please add “fastri” to the  
subject in order to bypass the spam filters.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![tulkas](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/t/5daacb/32.png) [@tulkas](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/tulkas)\
**Post date:** [November 10, 2006, 1:52pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/fastri-0-1-1-fast-smart-ri-docs-searching-configurable-se/75500/2 "2006-11-10T13:52:08Z")

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Mauricio F. wrote:

> FastRI is an alternative to the ri command-line tool. It is _much_ faster, and  
> also allows you to offer RI lookup services over DRb. FastRI is smarter than  
> ri, and can find classes anywhere in the hierarchy without specifying the  
> “full path”. Its RubyGems support is better than ri’s, and it knows which gem  
> a method/class definition came from.

Excellent work. Works perfectly on my osx box.  
Though, standard ri goes in to ‘less’ mode, I kinda got used to that.  
Could it be possible that with some ~/.fastri configuration file I  
could control if I want to pass it though ‘less -R’ ? (I’m assuming  
not everyone wants it as a default.)

Now to alias ri to fri and somehow make it fallback if the server  
isn’t running =)

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![tulkas](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/t/5daacb/32.png) [@tulkas](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/tulkas)\
**Post date:** [November 11, 2006, 12:13am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/fastri-0-1-1-fast-smart-ri-docs-searching-configurable-se/75500/3 "2006-11-11T00:13:52Z")

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On Fri, Nov 10, 2006 at 09:51:48PM +0900, Mikko L. wrote:

> could control if I want to pass it though ‘less -R’ ? (I’m assuming  
> not everyone wants it as a default.)

Sure, I’ll implement it; it will probably be in 0.2.0. I always hated  
that  
about ri though, so I think it’ll default to pager-less mode 😉

> Now to alias ri to fri and somehow make it fallback if the server  
> isn’t running =)

Jonas P. has done some work towards making fri launch the server  
(which  
would run as a daemon). We’re not there yet, but I’ve created a branch  
for  
that at [eigenclass.org](http://eigenclass.org/repos/fastri/branch-daemon/) (hint: help  
appreciated 🙂

The bin/fastri-server you’ll find there honors a -d option to run in the  
background. This works already, using the ‘daemons’ gem, but it’d be  
best if  
we could get rid of that dependency (a reasonable #daemonize should take  
a  
dozen lines). bin/fri already tries to start the server when it cannot  
be  
found, but this is not working yet (did I say that patches are  
appreciated? :).  
Another pending issue is win32 compatibility: would it be possible to  
write  
something equivalent to #daemonize without fork()?

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![tulkas](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/t/5daacb/32.png) [@tulkas](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/tulkas)\
**Post date:** [November 11, 2006, 12:19am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/fastri-0-1-1-fast-smart-ri-docs-searching-configurable-se/75500/4 "2006-11-11T00:19:53Z")

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On Fri, Nov 10, 2006 at 09:51:48PM +0900, Mikko L. wrote:

> Excellent work. Works perfectly on my osx box.  
> =====  
> Now to alias ri to fri and somehow make it fallback if the server  
> isn’t running =)

I forgot to point you to  
[dRuby + Rindaでriを15倍速くするfastri - 角谷HTML化計画(2006-11-08)](http://kakutani.com/20061108.html)  
which shows how to run fastri-server automatically when you login on  
OSX.