helpful
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Wilfred
Speed up first load
The first time I call helpful-(callable|variable) I have to wait a couple seconds, whereas subsequent calls (to look up different symbols) have only half a second delay. Calling (require 'helpful) beforehand does not resolve this. Is it possible to preload something that would make the first helpful command as fast as the rest?
It's possible that helpful--read-symbol is slow on your system as it offers completion for any symbol defined in the current Emacs instance.
Try this:
M-x profiler-start RET cpu RET
M-x helpful-callable # reproduce the slowness
M-x profiler-stop
M-x profiler-report
Does that show what's running slowly? Do you have e.g. an exotic helm setup?
Got Ivy/Counsel rather than Helm; nothing unusual that I'm aware of, my customizations are pretty tame (just using the recommended format customization, activating selectable prompt, using helpful as the describing functions, rebinding a couple keys, and using ivy-rich).
Had to report before stop, but this looks like the culprit:
- helpful-callable 1384 41%
- helpful-update 1384 41%
- helpful--in-manual-p 1384 41%
- info-lookup->completions 1384 41%
- info-lookup-setup-mode 1384 41%
info-lookup-make-completions 1384 41%
On a subsequent call I've got merely: helpful-callable 137 5%!
Looks like if I want to pay this initial cost early I can call:
(require 'info-look)
(info-lookup-setup-mode 'symbol 'emacs-lisp-mode)
That works for me. It's possible that Info lookup is particularly slow on Termux (it's also the only place I've run into that loading Emacs spits out a bunch of "loading this file, loading that file" for a few seconds). As far as I'm concerned this can be closed, but feel free to leave it open for tracking if you want to dig into the issue deeper (I'd be happy to try any other troubleshooting suggestions if it might be possible to narrow down why info lookup is slow and try a more proper fix).