January 1, 2026
Fast or busted: package drama
Can Bundler Be as Fast as Uv?
Ruby devs clash over speed, Rust rewrites, and rule‑bending
TLDR: A Ruby dev argues Bundler can match uv’s speed by fixing bottlenecks instead of rewriting in Rust. The crowd is split: some say installer speed doesn’t matter, others cheer practical tweaks, and many question uv’s trick of ignoring version limits to go faster, sparking big debate.
A Ruby developer just declared “Bundler can be as fast as uv,” and the internet did what it does best: split into camps and light the comments on fire. The claim is simple—fix Bundler’s bottlenecks and you don’t need a total Rust rewrite—and the crowd had thoughts. dboreham rolled in with the classic curmudgeon energy: who even cares how fast package installers are? Meanwhile, performance fans cheered the focus on real design wins over shiny language hype.
The real drama? uv, the speed‑demon tool from the Python world, reportedly skips some version rules to go fast. That got the pearl‑clutchers out: quotemstr said their opinion of uv is “damaged,” and the comments filled with “is speed worth it?” hand‑wringing. dbalatero backed the practical approach, praising the “don’t rewrite, just fix it” vibe. Others nitpicked the Ruby packaging details, with nightpool side‑eyeing the explanation and asking if the metadata story is really that tidy.
Over on Hacker News, How uv got so fast exploded with 457 comments, which is basically internet code for “this is a fight.” Memes appeared: “Rust fixes everything” vs “just do better algorithms,” plus jokes about speed limits and version cops. Verdict: Bundler wants to race; the crowd is debating the rules of the track.
Key Points
- •The author argues Bundler can match uv’s speed, based on analysis and a performance presentation.
- •Uv’s performance stems largely from design decisions, not solely from being written in Rust.
- •RubyGems uses YAML GemSpec and an API to obtain dependency metadata without code evaluation.
- •RubyGems.org already provides metadata similarly to Python’s PEP 658, enabling faster resolution.
- •Uv reduces resolver backtracking by ignoring upper bounds on requires-python, a highlighted trade-off.