customize-apropos-options takes forever...

customize-apropos-options takes forever...

[Drew Adams]

 M-x customize-apropos-options RET RET

On Emacs 22, this takes quite a while. On Emacs 20, it finishes very
quickly.

Emacs 22 has a lot more options, of course, and more faces and buttons and
such, but it still feels like things are less efficient now. In emacs -Q,
there are 4698 lines in the buffer in Emacs 22; in Emacs 20, there are 2333
lines (about half). But Emacs 22 takes *far* longer than twice as long.

[Why would anyone want to customize all options? I don't know, but you might
want to search among option values or something. If you just want
descriptions, `apropos-variable' is of course better (too bad the name
doesn't say "option"). `edit-options' will give you values too, but Emacs
spits a nasty obsoletion message at you (forgetting to put `options' in
quotes, BTW).]

Re: customize-apropos-options takes forever...

[Chong Yidong]

>  M-x customize-apropos-options RET RET
>
> [Why would anyone want to customize all options? I don't know, but you might
> want to search among option values or something.

In that case, you simply do customize-apropos RET regexp RET.

Re: customize-apropos-options takes forever...

[Richard Stallman]

    Emacs 22 has a lot more options, of course, and more faces and buttons and
    such, but it still feels like things are less efficient now. In emacs -Q,
    there are 4698 lines in the buffer in Emacs 22; in Emacs 20, there are 2333
    lines (about half). But Emacs 22 takes *far* longer than twice as long.

Probably something really is wrong.  The question is what.

Would you like to try running Emacs 22 under a debugger
and stopping it a few times uring this operation?
If you notice a place that shows up frequently in the backtrace,
that might be the place that is using the time.

RE: customize-apropos-options takes forever...

[Drew Adams]

        Emacs 22 has a lot more options, of course, and more faces
        and buttons and such, but it still feels like things are
        less efficient now. In emacs -Q, there are 4698 lines in the
        buffer in Emacs 22; in Emacs 20, there are 2333
        lines (about half). But Emacs 22 takes *far* longer than
        twice as long.

    Probably something really is wrong.  The question is what.

    Would you like to try running Emacs 22 under a debugger
    and stopping it a few times uring this operation?
    If you notice a place that shows up frequently in the backtrace,
    that might be the place that is using the time.

I feel comfortable with the lisp debugger, but not with gdb etc.

Also, I just don't have the time right now. If this can be checked with the
lisp debugger (debug-on-entry...), then I will try to check it later.

Re: customize-apropos-options takes forever...

[Chong Yidong]

"Drew Adams" <drew.adams@oracle.com> writes:

>  M-x customize-apropos-options RET RET
>
> On Emacs 22, this takes quite a while. On Emacs 20, it finishes very
> quickly.
>
> Emacs 22 has a lot more options, of course, and more faces and buttons and
> such, but it still feels like things are less efficient now. In emacs -Q,
> there are 4698 lines in the buffer in Emacs 22; in Emacs 20, there are 2333
> lines (about half). But Emacs 22 takes *far* longer than twice as long.

I took some time to look into this.

For M-x customize-apropos RET RET:

Emacs 22 takes 140.04 seconds to make 1904 entries, i.e. 13.6 / second.
Emacs 21 takes 76.38  seconds to make 1048 entries, i.e. 13.7 / second.

Conclusion: >>>> This Is Not A Bug <<<<

I think the reason you thought Emacs 22 is slower is that the echo
area tells you how much % of the job is done.  Obviously, 1% of 1904
entries takes longer to do than 1% of 1048 entries, giving the
illusion that Emacs 22 is progressing more slowly.

In the reality, of course, it's silly to do M-x customize-apropos with
no regexp in the first place.

RE: customize-apropos-options takes forever...

[Drew Adams]

    >  M-x customize-apropos-options RET RET
    >
    > On Emacs 22, this takes quite a while. On Emacs 20, it finishes very
    > quickly.
    >
    > Emacs 22 has a lot more options, of course, and more faces
    > and buttons and such, but it still feels like things are less
    > efficient now. In emacs -Q, there are 4698 lines in the buffer
    > in Emacs 22; in Emacs 20, there are 2333 lines (about half).
    > But Emacs 22 takes *far* longer than twice as long.

    I took some time to look into this.

Thanks Chong.

    For M-x customize-apropos RET RET:

    Emacs 22 takes 140.04 seconds to make 1904 entries, i.e. 13.6 / second.
    Emacs 21 takes 76.38  seconds to make 1048 entries, i.e. 13.7 / second.

    Conclusion: >>>> This Is Not A Bug <<<<

I was comparing Emacs 20, not Emacs 21. Perhaps the same difference in
performance exists between 20 and 21. Believe me, there is a marked
difference between 20 and 22. Again, I know that Customize in 22 is a lot
fancier than in 20, and it does more behind the scene, so degraded
performance is not a full measure of usefulness - Customize in 22 is better
than in 20, and I don't want to go backward here.

    I think the reason you thought Emacs 22 is slower is that the echo
    area tells you how much % of the job is done.  Obviously, 1% of 1904
    entries takes longer to do than 1% of 1048 entries, giving the
    illusion that Emacs 22 is progressing more slowly.

No, I was not paying attention to the echo area. I was simply waiting for
the buffer to appear (!) and for my keyboard and mouse to come back to me
from Never-Never Land.

    In the reality, of course, it's silly to do M-x customize-apropos with
    no regexp in the first place.

Agreed, but people do silly things sometimes. Searching among all options is
a reasonable thing to want to do, but I agree that there are other ways to
do that.

apropos-variable is good for getting descriptions of all user options (but
not faces) - but it doesn't show you the values. And edit-options is quick
and useful for getting both descriptions and values, but it is deprecated.

Re: customize-apropos-options takes forever...

[Chong Yidong]

> No, I was not paying attention to the echo area. I was simply waiting for
> the buffer to appear (!) and for my keyboard and mouse to come back to me
> from Never-Never Land.

C-g works.

In the meantime, let's work on the release instead of trying to make
Emacs 22 Custom faster than Emacs 20 (!!) for an unrealistic usage
situation.

Re: customize-apropos-options takes forever...

[Richard Stallman]

	Would you like to try running Emacs 22 under a debugger
	and stopping it a few times uring this operation?
	If you notice a place that shows up frequently in the backtrace,
	that might be the place that is using the time.

    I feel comfortable with the lisp debugger, but not with gdb etc.

You can try using debug-on-quit and the Lisp debugger.  If the
slowness is at Lisp level, you would find it that way.  But I would
guess it is at the C level.  If so, you could only see it with a
C level debugger.

Re: customize-apropos-options takes forever...

[Richard Stallman]

Thanks for checking this.