File: README — Documentation for fastri (0.3.1.1)

Overview

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 a bit smarter than ri, and can find classes anywhere in the hierarchy without specifying the “full path”. It also knows about gems, and can tell you e.g. which extensions to a core class were added by a specific gem.

Install

Just run

setup.rb

Usage

FastRI can be used either standalone or with a DRb server, for extra speed.

The standalone client is qri and is used the same way as ri; run

$ qri -h

to list the options.

There are two parts to FastRI over DRb:

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.

qri and fri are nearly identical, the only difference being that fri tries to use a FastRI service over DRb by default.

fri Quickstart

$ fastri-server             (blocks)

Later,

$ fri String
---------------------------------------------------------- Class: String
     A String object holds and manipulates an arbitrary sequence of
     bytes, typically representing characters. String objects may be
     created using String::new or as literals.
...

Read on for more information, including how to make FastRI work across machines.

Launching the server

For local usage, just

$ fastri-server

will do. The DRb service will bind to 127.0.0.1, and only connections from 127.0.0.1 will be allowed. If you want to allow fri to be used from other machines, you have to specify which interface to bind to, and allow incoming connections from the desired hosts. For example, if your network is 192.168.1.0, and your IP is 192.168.1.2, you can do

$ fastri-server -a 192.168.1.0/24 -s 192.168.1.2
FastRI 0.0.1 listening on druby://192.168.1.2:41217
ACL:
deny  all
allow localhost
allow 192.168.1.0/24

Further options are documented in

$ fastri-server -h

Using fri

Running fri with no options (or -h/–help) will explain the command-line options. If you are using fri locally (i.e. on the same server as fastri-server), just use it as follows:

$ fri Array
------------------------------------------------------- Class: Array
Arrays are ordered, integer-indexed collections of any object.
...

If you’re on a different machine, you’ll probably have to specify which address the DRb service should be attached to. You can either specify it with -s ADDRESS (or –bind ADDRESS), or set the FASTRI_ADDR environment variable. For example, if you’re on 192.168.1.101, both

export FASTRI_ADDR="192.168.1.101"
fri Array

and

fri -s 192.168.1.101 Array

will work. Note that FASTRI_ADDR is the local address: the server will be discovered automatically. (The reason why the local address must be specified is that it will be given to the ring server, which must be able to establish a reverse connection through the local DRb service.)

Feedback

Bug reports, patches, comments… are appreciated. You can contact the author via <[email protected]>. Please add “fastri” to the subject in order to bypass the spam filters.

License

FastRI is licensed under the same terms as Ruby. See LICENSE.