homebrew's performance is mostly network (git / http / https) and compilation times when needed.
also for some reason homebrew really likes to updates its index all the time (I think it got tamed in the newest version), but setting HOMEBREW_NO_AUTO_UPDATE to 1 helps a lot.
With HOMEBREW_NO_AUTO_UPDATE and HOMEBREW_NO_GITHUB_API, it still gobbles up a core for a full minute to find a substring in a list of strings. Even if it looks through directories for this, I can't imagine how this task would perform so badly. It's not system cpu time primarily.
It is no worse than python, but with the 3x3 initiative the main implementation will be a lot faster than today, which will never happen to python unless the current lead will go 180 degrees against what Guido always claimed.
Python and ruby have about the same speed for most common tasks (or at least in the same ballpark), IE: dirt slow once you leave the comfort of the fast parts of the runtime that are written in C.
The thing is, I do some Python programming for money, and I'm having a hard time imagining what the Brew team did to make `brew search` and its other parts so slow. I'd probably have to compare strings byte by byte in Python code for that.
Might have to learn me some Ruby just to figure out this mystery.
The slowness of brew isnt ruby's fault. They don't keep a local cache of the taps, but instead searches for taps using an API that interfaces with github and searches local taps, remote taps, then blacklisted taps and then probably something more. It is limited by network speed, not by string searching.
It's not limited by network speed because I have HOMEBREW_NO_GITHUB_API and HOMEBREW_NO_AUTO_UPDATE enabled. It's not like I just today stumbled into the problem.
Brew's not even consuming much system cpu time during `brew search`, despite hogging a core for a full minute.
also for some reason homebrew really likes to updates its index all the time (I think it got tamed in the newest version), but setting HOMEBREW_NO_AUTO_UPDATE to 1 helps a lot.