[Geany-Devel] Geany performance

[Павел Рощин]

> IIUC what you are seeing here is Scintilla laying out the window for the
> first time, not just the goto.  That still will be done if the
> editor_goto_pos is not called, just from a delayed idle callback IIUC.  If
> its in the order of 3 seconds then I'm not sure delaying it is really going
> to improve the user experience (even though it moves the action out of the
> function you are measuring :)

Profiling shows that loading time was reduced dramatically. And I feel that
difference as user.

> This now ignores the cl_options settings since it doesn't call
> set_cursor_position() any more :(

It doesn't _only_ if pos == 0. Go to zero position? Imagine I'm trying to load
project with 1000 files. For each document set_cursor_position(0) will be
called. Why?

> Possibly, but you have to ensure that the actions actually happen at some
> point.  Sure you don't have to layout the hidden windows immediately, but
> does that mean that the first time you swap to a hidden file is slow?

This is the thing called interface responsiveness. For user it's _much_ better
to wait 0.02 sec 1000 times when clicking on document than wait 20 sec on
loading. Most JIT compilers based on this trick: JIT compiler "delays" hot
loops preferring execution over compiling.

> It is difficult, it has been discussed many times, but neither Geany, nor
> Ctags, nor tagmanager, nor GTK are thread safe and it would take a major
> re-design to use them from multiple threads.

I see, but it could be a great improvement. Maybe even make co-routines but in
multicore world it sounds surprisingly.


> Basically the same problem as number 1), plus the difficulty of maintaining
> which tabs are loaded and laid out.

Same answer: responsiveness and again responsiveness. I'm human, if computer
thinks 0.1 sec - I will even don't notice, if interface holds for 10 sec - it
makes me nervous. Maintaining should simple: just add flag "delayed_load" and
toggle it first time user clicked on document. Of course if there are no
architecture problems.

> Sad as I am to say it, but maybe those with 1000s of tabs need a different
> editor/ide, Geany's target is "small lightweight and simple" and it is
> important that it maintains its focus on that.

I tried Eclipse. Without plugins it's functionality is similar to Notepad++ but
it eats 0.5 Gb of memory even without any project. To support all languages I
need  for I should download thousands of plugins and now it eatch 1.5 Gb.
QtCreator is a good but... C++ only. Recently Python was added.

I need Geany for my work - it's huge project and I should handle over 10 million
of files with different languages - from TeX to C++. Either I have to open 100-s
of IDE or I can use Geany. I know there are much to do, I'm sure I could help
with developing but let's start with this simple improvement? I'll make PR if
it's easier for you.

--
Pavel