ruby-libgd released - a modern native raster engine for Ruby

"We're excited to announce the release of ruby-libgd, a modern native Ruby binding to libgd."

"After RubyConf 2025 highlighted the difficulty of generating map tiles and images in Ruby due to unmaintained bindings and slow ImageMagick wrappers, ruby-libgd fills a critical gap: a fast, in-memory, GC-safe image processing layer for Ruby without external processes."

ruby-libgd provides a modern, native binding between Ruby and libgd that enables efficient image creation and manipulation entirely in memory. The binding avoids spawning external processes and integrates with Ruby's garbage collector for safer memory handling. The library addresses long-standing problems caused by unmaintained bindings and slow ImageMagick-based wrappers, especially for generating map tiles and GIS imagery. ruby-libgd aims to speed up image pipelines, reduce overhead, and make map tile production viable in Ruby applications. The binding can improve performance for web mapping, GIS tooling, and any Ruby code that needs fast, programmatic image processing.

Read at Rubyflow