incompatibility with the tikz library `external`

[jonas-frey]

trafficstars

Is there a reason that tikz-cd is incompatible with the tikz library external? I think it would be really helpful if one could buffer compiled diagrams to improve recompilation times, similar to xypic's \CompileMatrices.

[astoff]

I guess the reason is exactly the one explained in first answer to the stackexchange question. Perhaps in the 9 years since it was written, a better solution to this issue is available. I haven't tried.

Probably the most/only reasonable solution would be to extend the externalization library to allow custom environment names. It seems that the search for \begin{tikzpicture} ... \end{tikzpicture} is hard-coded.