spinel-coop/rv

[epic] Make caching real good

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#414 opened on Jan 25, 2026

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good first issue

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Description

We have several significant opportunities to improve the ways rv caches things to make the things we do often really fast:

  • set up the cacache crate for the other parts of rv to use
  • unpack ruby and gem tarballs into our cacache, so we only store each file once even if it is in multiple versions of a gem
  • install gems by copy-on-write hardlinking the files in that gem from cacache into the install directory, instead of unpacking tarballs
  • after compiling native extensions, copy the results into cacache. on future installs simply hardlink those files as well, so any particular machine will never compile a gem more than once
  • put git gem clones into the global cache, so you never have to do a full checkout of a git repo (eg rails) a second time

Contributor guide

Research direction
Focus on integrating the cacache crate into rv, then implementing hardlinking from cacache to install directories for gems and native extensions.
Tech stack
rustruby
Domain
backenddevops
Issue type
Performance
DifficultyEstimated implementation difficulty for a new contributor, from 1 for very small changes to 5 for expert-level work.
3
Estimated timeA rough time range for an experienced contributor to investigate, implement, test, and prepare a pull request.
Over 1 week
Activity statusHow available the issue appears right now: fresh, active, stale, blocked, or waiting on maintainer input.
Fresh
ClarityHow clearly the issue explains the expected change, acceptance criteria, and next step.
Clear
Prerequisites
RustGit
Newbie friendlinessA 1-100 score estimating how approachable this issue is for first-time contributors.
40