In case you're wondering why did I use windows instead of other OS-es better suited for ruby like MacOSX/linux it's because I'm comfortable with it and if you're disagree then feel free to stop reading at this point :)
Several days ago I found about this fork of ruby by TheCodeShop which will speed up things quiet significantly, I decided to try it and one of my project unit tests which needed around 45 sec to complete reduced to less than 20 sec.
Installation
This step assume you're using Win7 with pik to manage multiple ruby installation, if you don't have pik yet get it from https://github.com/vertiginous/pik
- Download one of ruby build from:
https://github.com/thecodeshop/ruby/wiki/Downloads
(I'm using winio one) - Extract it, for example to C:\Ruby-tcs193
- Modify Path to use ruby-tcs: go to Control Panel, System, Advanced System Settings, Environment Variables
- Edit Path in User variables, modify existing Ruby bin path to ruby-tcs bin (C:\Ruby-tcs193)
- Add new variable RUBYOPT with value: "-rfenix/replace"
- Next, add it to pik (you can stop here if you didn't use pik, but I recommend it in case you need to switch to standard ruby)
- open cmd, then enter "pik add [path to ruby-tcs bin]" for example "pik add C:\Ruby-tcs193\bin"
- Lastly install devkit for it, run "ruby c:\devkit\dk.rb init" then "ruby c:\devkit\dk.rb install"
- Done :)