I guess that is just expanding the src blocks, not actually running them. I couldn't find where that happens though, it is early in the export process I think.

Maybe you can just use a preprocessing hook to export to org, which should only include the selected sections, then export that to what you want.

John

-----------------------------------
Professor John Kitchin (he/him/his)
Doherty Hall A207F
Department of Chemical Engineering
Carnegie Mellon University
Pittsburgh, PA 15213
412-268-7803


On Fri, Feb 18, 2022 at 7:07 AM Eric S Fraga <e.fraga@ucl.ac.uk> wrote:
Hello all,

TL;DR: can I have org completely ignore src blocks in non-selected
sections during export without using COMMENT?

Longer version: I am in the process of writing a book.  I prefer to have
all the content in one file and use SELECT_TAGS to limit the export (for
formatting) to the current section I am working on.

I have noticed that all org babel src blocks are processed in some way
even if (a) they are not in a selected section and (b) have, for
instance, ":eval no-export" set.  For some of these blocks, the
processing time appears to be quite significant, e.g. if they have a
":var x=somebigtable", but I could be wrong about this, of course.

I do not understand why these src blocks are processed at all.  Is there
some way to stop them being processed?  I know I could "comment" out all
other sections but that's a lot more work and messy than simply tagging
the current section to be selected.

Attached is a minimal example.  When I export, I see these messages:

org-babel-exp process julia at position 162...
org-babel-exp process julia at position 384...

Thank you,
eric

--
: Eric S Fraga, with org release_9.5.2-385-g37d8bc in Emacs 29.0.50