This gem allows you to build the c-extensions of a ruby-gem on a host with build-tools installed, make the result available over HTTP, then use this on end machines that may not have build-tools installed.
$ gem install rubygems-precompiled
There are two halves to this, the pre-compile on a build machine and the install on machines that don't have the build-tools available.
Fetch a gem you're interested in:
gem fetch foobar -v '0.1.0'
Pre-compile the gem into the correct folder structure:
gem precompile -a -o /output foobar-0.1.0.gem
Which will write the file:
/output/ruby-1.9.3p448/x86_64-linux/foobar-0.1.0.tar.gz
You need to make this directory structure available over HTTP, and available to the installation machines.
Configure the cache path (file:/// and http:// urls are supported at the moment) in /etc/gemrc:
precompiled_cache:
- http://some.server/ruby-gem-extensions/
Install a gem using the cache:
gem install foobar -v '0.1.0'