--- title: "Shopify's push to make Bundler and RubyGems faster" publication: "Ruby Weekly" issue: 791 published_at: "2026-03-12" canonical_url: "https://rubyweekly.com/issues/791" --- Plus mruby 4.0 enters RC, Ruby 3.4.9 is released, some Ruby events to attend, and Sidekiq's new TUI admin tool. #​791 — March 12, 2026 [Read on the Web](https://rubyweekly.com/issues/791) Together with [![FastRuby.io\](https://res.cloudinary.com/cpress/image/upload/c_fill,g_auto,w_467,h_106/e_make_transparent/co_white,e_outline:14/y65nyff19ylf5udphsq4.png)](https://go.fastruby.io/818) Ruby Weekly [![\](https://res.cloudinary.com/cpress/image/upload/w_1280,e_sharpen:60,q_auto/wfylif0qdsarlilhhxno.jpg)](https://railsatscale.com/2026-03-09-faster-bundler/) [Building a Faster _Bundler_](https://railsatscale.com/2026-03-09-faster-bundler/) — The Shopify team has been working on improvements to Bundler and RubyGems with the goal of reducing `bundle install` times. Increasing the HTTP connection pool size, parallel git clones, and optimizing hotspots in the codebase provide big wins, but they seek our help with another area in particular: precompiled gems. Edouard Chin and Eileen Uchitelle 🛠️ As part of the above, Shopify has released [cibuildgem](https://github.com/Shopify/cibuildgem), a tool to help gem authors release precompiled gems that can be installed faster. [![\](https://res.cloudinary.com/cpress/image/upload/c_limit,w_480,h_480,q_auto/copm/a27f50db.png)](https://go.fastruby.io/818) [Leaving Heroku? Plan Your Migration with FastRuby.io® 💸](https://go.fastruby.io/818) — FastRuby analyzes your Rails app, add-ons, and infrastructure to map a migration to Hatchbox, Fly, or elsewhere. Get a step-by-step plan with cost estimates before you commit. Migrate confidently with our team of experts. PaaS Migration Plans by FastRuby.io® sponsor [mruby 4.0 Enters Release Candidate Stage](https://github.com/mruby/mruby/blob/master/NEWS.md) — [mruby](https://mruby.org/) is a lightweight, embeddable subset of Ruby to run in constrained environments and that, like CRuby, is [led by Matz.](https://mruby.org/team/) v4.0 adds support for pattern matching, _many_ GC, memory and VM improvements, [Cosmopolitan Libc](https://github.com/jart/cosmopolitan) support, a `mirb` overhaul, and more. Matz and Team **⚡️ IN BRIEF:** - ⭐ [Ruby 3.4.9 has been released](https://www.ruby-lang.org/en/news/2026/03/11/ruby-3-4-9-released/) including a fix for [the `zlib` vulnerability](https://www.ruby-lang.org/en/news/2026/03/05/buffer-overflow-zlib-cve-2026-27820/) we mentioned last week. - 🤖 With [this commit](https://github.com/rails/website/commit/8e261885e35839a2d11795dfd01ec23b8a1cfc29), the [Rails homepage](https://rubyonrails.org/) adopted a _'fresh pitch for the agentic age'_ focused on selling Rails' benefits for agentic development. - We recently mentioned that the `mise` version manager can now [download precompiled Ruby binaries](https://mise.jdx.dev/lang/ruby.html#precompiled-binaries). Jeff Dickey, the creator of Mise has [▶️ gone on the _Remote Ruby_ podcast](https://www.buzzsprout.com/2260490/episodes/18785026) to talk about the feature and Mise in general. - 🌐 [RubyEvents.org](https://www.rubyevents.org/) has [shared a monthly update](https://www.rubyevents.org/announcements/february-2026-newsletter) that includes future Ruby events and currently open CFPs. [How I Audit a Legacy Rails Codebase](https://piechowski.io/post/how-i-audit-a-legacy-rails-codebase/) — A methodical walkthrough of how to approach an inherited codebase, including checking versions, scanning the Gemfile for red flags, reviewing the schema, and identifying perf hotspots. Ally Piechowski 🤖 [Mistral's Attempt to Put Rails Testing on Autopilot](https://mistral.ai/news/rails-testing-on-autopilot-building-an-agent-that-writes-what-developers-wont) — A post from France’s best-known AI shop detailing an autonomous agent they’ve built to work on RSpec suites in Rails apps. The end result is called [Mistral_Vibe_](https://github.com/mistralai/mistral-vibe). Langelier and Grosmaitre (Mistral) [AI Shouldn't Cost More Than It Saves](https://sinaptia.dev/services/intelligent-rails-applications?utm_source=cooperpress&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=rubyweekly-2026q1&utm_content=sponsored) — We can find where LLMs pay off, validate with real data, and tune for cost/effectiveness. Need help from experts? [Let's talk](https://sinaptia.dev/contact-us?utm_source=cooperpress&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=rubyweekly-2026q1&utm_content=sponsored). SINAPTIA sponsor 🤖 [How to Enable Ruby LSP in Claude Code](https://allaboutcoding.ghinda.com/configure-claude-code-with-ruby-lsp) – Claude Code has official support for [Ruby LSP](https://shopify.github.io/ruby-lsp/) meaning it can navigate Ruby code more efficiently. Lucian Ghinda 📄 [How Gem Namespaces Work on `gem.coop`](https://gem.coop/updates/6/) Kasper Timm Hansen and David Rodríguez 📄 [Your Chat Bot Needs a Better Rate Limit Strategy](https://thoughtbot.com/blog/chat-bot-per-user-rate-limits) – _“Don’t let one ambitious user trigger a denial of service.”_ Steve Polito (Thoughtbot) 📄 [From 40 Minutes to 4 with Tests Parallelization](https://www.fastruby.io/blog/speed-up-tests-from-40-to-4-minutes.html) Ariel Juodziukynas (Ombulabs) 🛠 Code & Tools [![\](https://res.cloudinary.com/cpress/image/upload/w_1280,e_sharpen:60,q_auto/awfsgrdg3d1cmt56me2s.jpg)](https://www.mikeperham.com/2026/03/10/sidekiq-in-the-terminal/) [Kiq: An Official TUI Admin Interface for Sidekiq](https://www.mikeperham.com/2026/03/10/sidekiq-in-the-terminal/) — Citing renewed interest in TUIs, Mike has created `kiq` where you can monitor and (mostly) manage Sidekiq in the terminal. It’s built on top of [RatatuiRuby.](https://www.ratatui-ruby.dev/) Mike Perham [You Picked Postgres for a Reason. Don't Leave It for Analytics](https://www.tigerdata.com/timescaledb?utm_source=cooperpress&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=ruby-weekly-newsletter) — TimescaleDB extends Postgres so analytics runs on live data. No second database, no pipeline. [Start for free](https://www.tigerdata.com/timescaledb?utm_source=cooperpress&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=ruby-weekly-newsletter). Tiger Data (creators of TimescaleDB) sponsor 🖼️ [PureJPEG: A Pure Ruby JPEG Encoder and Decoder Library](https://github.com/peterc/pure_jpeg) — Yes, this is one of mine! I wanted a pure Ruby way to work with JPEGs, including messing around with _how_ they're encoded (to get some crunchy late 90s effects). There’s a little behind the scenes story of its development in the README. Peter Cooper [WSDL 1.0: A WSDL Toolkit for Ruby](https://github.com/rubiii/wsdl) — [WSDL](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_Services_Description_Language) (Web Services Description Language) is an XML language that describes, most commonly, SOAP-based web services, and this library provides full WSDL 1.1 support. It’s from the creator of [Savon](https://github.com/savonrb/savon), a well-used SOAP client library, so the author knows the space well. rubiii [Rubydex: A Static Analysis Toolkit for Ruby](https://github.com/Shopify/rubydex) — A new high-performance Ruby indexer with an MCP server designed for LLM tooling. Shopify - 🚦 [Stoplight 5.8](https://github.com/bolshakov/stoplight/releases/tag/v5.8.0) – Ruby implementation of the circuit breaker pattern to gracefully handle failures in external dependencies. - [Falcon 0.55](https://github.com/socketry/falcon) – High-performance Ruby web server. Used in production by Shopify, this is the first release in some time. - [Typhoeus 1.6](https://github.com/typhoeus/typhoeus/blob/master/CHANGELOG.md#160) – `libcurl`-wrapper optimized for parallel HTTP request use cases. - [FactoryTrace 2.0](https://github.com/djezzzl/factory_trace) – Finds and reports unused FactoryBot factories and traits. - [FixtureBot 0.3](https://github.com/rubymonolith/fixturebot) – The speed of fixtures with the syntactic sugar of factories. - [Rage 1.22](https://github.com/rage-rb/rage) – High-performance fiber-based Rails-compatible framework. - [AArch64 3.0](https://github.com/tenderlove/aarch64) – _Tenderlove_'s pure Ruby ARM64 assembler. - [Async 2.38.0](https://github.com/socketry/async) – The popular asynchronous I/O framework. - [Active Admin 3.5](https://activeadmin.info/) – Admin engine for Rails apps. Plus there have been updates to a few core tools and libraries including [RubyGems 4.0.8](https://blog.rubygems.org/2026/03/11/4.0.8-released.html), [JSON 2.19](https://github.com/ruby/json/releases/tag/v2.19.0), [curses 1.6](https://github.com/ruby/curses) (which [now supports](https://github.com/ruby/curses/pull/130) the ncurses extended colors API), and [Timeout 0.6.1](https://github.com/ruby/timeout/releases/tag/v0.6.1). 📰 Classifieds 🧐 Heroku alternatives? Our [cost comparison calculator](https://judoscale.com/tools/paas-pricing-calculator?utm_source=ruby-weekly&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=content&utm_content=head-to-head-alternatives) puts them head-to-head. --- [Learn proven reliability patterns at Replay 2026](https://replay.temporal.io/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=sponsorship&utm_campaign=newsletter-2026-03-12-ruby&utm_content=replay-2026-ruby) for distributed systems, scale, and Durable Execution. Save with code RUBY80. --- [Help us save the German healthcare system](https://reimbursement.info/softwareentwickler-in/) - Develop the leading healthcare stats platform with a small dedicated team in a stress free environment (Cologne based). 📢 Elsewhere in the ecosystem [![\](https://res.cloudinary.com/cpress/image/upload/w_1280,e_sharpen:60,q_auto/qdbi4pwfuupgbgvicckv.jpg)](https://difftastic.wilfred.me.uk/) - [Difftastic](https://difftastic.wilfred.me.uk/) is a tool that can diff code files, not merely on a line-by-line basis like `diff`, but based on _syntax_. It [supports all popular languages](https://difftastic.wilfred.me.uk/languages_supported.html) including Ruby, natch. Marco Roth has [a Ruby wrapper for it](https://github.com/marcoroth/difftastic-ruby), as well as [Minitest::Difftastic](https://github.com/marcoroth/minitest-difftastic) for using it to show diffs in test runs. - [GitHub addresses its recent availability and reliability issues](https://github.blog/news-insights/company-news/addressing-githubs-recent-availability-issues-2/) of which there have been quite a few… - [JSLinux](https://bellard.org/jslinux/) is Fabrice Bellard's JavaScript-powered Linux VM that runs in the browser. It's not new, but it now supports x86_64. I was happy to see Ruby is ready to go, too, if you drop into [this full Alpine Linux environment](https://bellard.org/jslinux/vm.html?cpu=x86_64&url=alpine-x86_64.cfg&mem=256), though `irb` is broken, alas. - Ruby core contributor Hiroshi Shibata is working to [eliminate RubyGems' dependency on `libyaml`.](https://github.com/ruby/rubygems/pull/9352) - [The Hanami project thanks Mike Perham and Sidekiq](https://hanamirb.org/blog/2026/03/12/thank-you-sidekiq-2026/) for their continued support in 2026. - [Homebrew 5.1.0](https://brew.sh/2026/03/10/homebrew-5.1.0/) has been released. Curated by [Peter Cooper](https://twitter.com/cooperx86) and [Glenn Goodrich](https://twitter.com/ruprict). Published by [Cooperpress](https://cooperpress.com/). [Change your email](https://rubyweekly.com/edit_subscription/*|UID|*) or [Stop getting this newsletter.](https://rubyweekly.com/leave/*|UID|*) © Cooper Press Ltd · Fairfield Enterprise Centre, Louth, LN11 0LS, United Kingdom Other weekly newsletters we publish include [Postgres Weekly](https://postgresweekly.com/), [React Status](https://react.statuscode.com/), [Frontend Focus](https://frontendfoc.us/), and [JavaScript Weekly](https://javascriptweekly.com/).