light versions of emacs and getting it to start faster

light versions of emacs and getting it to start faster

[GI]

Hi,
I'm interested in reducing the binary size of emacs, and getting it to start/load faster.

Reason: 
My current system (Redhat 7.2 on an i686) has an old version of emacs. My system administrator has not yet upgraded (and knowing him, it'll be a while ...). So I compiled my own version and have it somewhere in my homedirectory (on the network). I have to load up emacs multiple times in one session (I use it as my default editor in my mailreader - Mutt), and a large binary size stored remotely is painfully slow.

What I've done so far:
I compiled it (emacs 21.2) without X support. It reduced the binary size from 7MB to about 5. I can't get any lower than that.

I'm sure one can make the binary a lot smaller since the binary distributed by Redhat 7.3 is only about 4MB (and that has X support too!)

Also, it would be nice if emacs never loaded some pointless lisp files to begin with (like I never use the menu bar mode when i'm writiing emails). So if anyone knows how to strip down the lisp files emacs loads on startup to a bare minimum, that would also be helpful. But I guess what would give me most performace is killing the binary size!
Thanks,
Gautam

Re: light versions of emacs and getting it to start faster

[Alan Shutko]

GI <gautam@math.uchicago.edu> writes:

> I have to load up emacs multiple times in one session (I use it as
> my default editor in my mailreader - Mutt)

While you can certainly reduce the size of Emacs, you'll get the most
benefit if you don't have to restart Emacs all the time.  If you have
multiple connections to that machine (ie, multiple telnets), I'd
suggest leaving Emacs running all the time in one window and running
other apps in the other.  Set your editor to "emacsclient" and it'll
load files in the running Emacs.

If you can only have one connection to the machine, look into
"screen", which can let you switch between running apps on one
connection.  (As well as allowing you to reconnect if you lose your
connection, and other things.)

-- 
Alan Shutko <ats@acm.org> - In a variety of flavors!
Guns don't kill people, Postal Workers do.

Re: light versions of emacs and getting it to start faster

[John Wiegley]

>>>>> On Wed Sep 18, GI writes:

> Hi, I'm interested in reducing the binary size of emacs, and
> getting it to start/load faster.

Look at the file lisp/loadup.el.  Those are the Lisp files that are
bound into Emacs.  A lot of Emacs' size is due to the "Pure lisp
storage" that houses those bound files.  If you can, you can try to
reduce the size of the pure store (do a grep for PURE and SIZE).

Gzexe is another way to reduce transfer time.  If your processor is
decent, it will not affect execution time much.

Don't compile in Mule support.

John

Re: light versions of emacs and getting it to start faster

[Alan Shutko]

John Wiegley <johnw@gnu.org> writes:

> Don't compile in Mule support.

Possible on XEmacs, not on Emacs.

-- 
Alan Shutko <ats@acm.org> - In a variety of flavors!

Re: light versions of emacs and getting it to start faster

[Burton Samograd]

GI <gautam@math.uchicago.edu> wrote:

> Also, it would be nice if emacs never loaded some pointless lisp
  files to begin with (like I never use the menu bar mode when i'm
  writiing emails). So if anyone knows how to strip down the lisp
  files emacs loads on startup to a bare minimum, that would also be
  helpful. But I guess what would give me most performace is killing
  the binary size!

Try using strip to remove debugging symbols and make sure that
debugging is disabled (either with --disable-debug or removing -g from
CFLAGS in the Makefile)

burton

Re: light versions of emacs and getting it to start faster

[kgold]

For me the best answer to "how do I get emacs to start faster" is to
start it once at login and then run gnuserv. Run emacs as a server
and use gnuclient to attach additional processes to it.

I start emacs about once a month, so I don't really care about the 5
second startup.

GI <gautam@math.uchicago.edu> writes:
>
> I'm interested in reducing the binary size of emacs, and getting it to start/load faster.
> 
> Reason:
 
> My current system (Redhat 7.2 on an i686) has an old version of
> emacs. My system administrator has not yet upgraded (and knowing
> him, it'll be a while ...). So I compiled my own version and have it
> somewhere in my homedirectory (on the network). I have to load up
> emacs multiple times in one session (I use it as my default editor
> in my mailreader - Mutt), and a large binary size stored remotely is
> painfully slow.
> 
> What I've done so far: I compiled it (emacs 21.2) without X
> support. It reduced the binary size from 7MB to about 5. I can't get
> any lower than that.
> 
> I'm sure one can make the binary a lot smaller since the binary
> distributed by Redhat 7.3 is only about 4MB (and that has X support
> too!)
> 
> Also, it would be nice if emacs never loaded some pointless lisp
> files to begin with (like I never use the menu bar mode when i'm
> writiing emails). So if anyone knows how to strip down the lisp
> files emacs loads on startup to a bare minimum, that would also be
> helpful. But I guess what would give me most performace is killing
> the binary size!

-- 
-- 
Ken Goldman   kgold@watson.ibm.com   914-784-7646