Gemfast

Gemfast is a fast and secure rubygems server written in Go. That means it can be compiled into a single binary file and work on linux, darwin and windows operating systems. Gemfast can be quickly installed on a server without any other dependencies and configured using a single HashiCorp Configuration Language (HCL) file.

Gemfast

Why Gemfast

Gemfast was created for users who need to self-host their rubygems and want something quick to setup and easy to manage. Gemfast allows users to mirror and cache gems from rubygems.org as well as upload their own internally developed gems which can't be distributed publically. It supports both the legacy Dependency API and the newer Compact Index API.

Gemfast has the following unique benefits:

There is no need to install/upgrade/manage a version of Ruby on the server
Go is generally faster and requires less memory then Ruby (still ❤️ Ruby though)
There are no external server dependencies like postgres, redis or memcached
Gemfast can allow/deny gems based on CVE severity or a regex list (license version only)

Installing

Gemfast is currently distributed in two different ways, a .deb package and a docker image.

The .deb package includes a web server which proxies HTTPS traffic to Gemfast and is recommended when installing Gemfast on a virtual machine or bare-metal instance.

Debian Package

To install the .deb package, download it from the latest GitHub release and install it with dpkg.

curl -L -O gemfast_<version>_amd64.deb
sudo dpkg -i ./gemfast_<version>_amd64.deb
sudo systemctl start gemfast.service

Debian Package SSL

The Gemfast .deb package includes Caddy Server which will automatically generate and manage a let's encrypt SSL certificate for your server. Caddy offers a few ways to generate a valid SSL certificate, see: https://caddyserver.com/docs/automatic-https#acme-challenges. If the let's encrypt challenge fails, the server will use a self-signed certificate.

Docker

When running Gemfast as a container, its important to mount the following directories:

/etc/gemfast - The directory for the gemfast.hcl config file
/var/gemfast - The directory for the Gemfast data including gems and database

If using a licensed version of gemfast, also mount:

/etc/machine-id - Used when registering a license key

docker run -d --name gemfast-server \
  -p 2020:2020 \
  -v /etc/gemfast:/etc/gemfast \
  -v /var/gemfast:/var/gemfast \
  -v /etc/machine-id:/etc/machine-id \
  ghcr.io/gemfast/server:latest

Building From Source

Gemfast uses Make to build binaries. To build and run a static binary:

make
./bin/gemfast-server

Docs

You can configure gemfast settings using the /etc/gemfast/gemfast.hcl file. There are many options all of which are listed in the documentation.

For more information see: https://gemfast.io/docs/configuration/

UI

Gemfast includes a basic ui which is accessible from my.server.url/ui. For example, running it locally you can access it at http://localhost:2020/ui.

The ui currently supports viewing and searching gems from both the private gems namespace and gems that have been cached from an upsteam.

You can also disable the ui in /etc/gemfast/gemfast.hcl:

ui_disabled = true

License

Gemfast is source available software licensed under the Elastic License 2.0 (ELv2) License. The license restricts users from:

Providing the software to third parties as a hosted or managed service
Circumventing the license key functionality

Users who purchase a license key will get access to all Gemfast features, support from the Gemfast creator and a commercial friendly license.

gscho / gemfast-server