Re: Improving Gnus speed

[Francis Moreau <francis.moro@gmail.com>]

Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen <larsi@gnus.org> writes:

> Francis Moreau <francis.moro@gmail.com> writes:
>
>> For example, I have a group which contains 1298 articles. Entering it
>> lasts 9 seconds:
>>
>>     - 7 secs in the fetching process
>>     - 2 secs in sorting + summary buffer generation
>
> [...]
>
>> I'm giving you the elp results when entering in the group containing
>> 1298 articles, with all articles displayed:
>>
>> gnus-thread-total-score                                 21809       18.607898999  0.0008532211
>
> elp is still claiming that this function is being called 21k times, and
> that this takes 18 seconds.  Which sort of doesn't make much sense, since:
>
>> gnus-group-select-group                                 1           10.66085      10.66085
>
> This is surely the top-level function being called, so the 18 seconds
> sorting should be counted here, too, but it isn't, which is why I was
> wondering whether you were doing other things between each
> elp-results... 

I agree with you, these numbers are crazy. Actually I was looking at the
time elapsed, and I can't interpret them at all. It says 18.6 seconds
where as the whole process lasts 10 seconds at most.

I re-did several times the same benchmarks and the figures seem stable.

>
> Anyway:
>
>> gnus-get-newsgroup-headers-xover                        1           6.78624       6.78624
>
> There's the seven seconds...
>

Yes the longuest one

>
>> gnus-summary-number-of-articles-in-thread               22361       3.2177489999  0.0001439000
>
> And there's a totally crazy call number again.  That function should be
> called (generally) once per displayed article in the summary buffer (if
> you have that in your summary line format).  But it's called 10x the
> number of times.
>
>> gnus-dd-mmm                                             1301        0.9418810000  0.0007239669
>
> I'm guessing you have a somewhat non-standard summary line format for
> that function to show up, but at least it tallies up with the number of
> articles in the group, somewhat.

Here's my summary line format if that can help:

  (setq gnus-summary-line-format
        (concat
         "%0{%U%R%z%}" "%10{│%}" "%3t" "%10{│%}"
         "%(%-20,20f %)" "%10{│%}" "%1{%d%}" "%10{│%}"
         "%6V" "%10{│%}" "%10{%B%}" "%s\n"))
  

>> gnus-id-to-thread                                       21805       0.1913100000  8.773...e-06
>
> Again, a totally ridiculous call number...
>
> I'd suggest removing all Gnus customisations to find out what triggers
> these weird call numbers.

Ok, I'm trying...

Let's remove my summary line format customisation... and the numbers are
now:

  gnus-topic-select-group                 1           8.071814      8.071814
  gnus-group-select-group                 1           8.071757      8.071757
  gnus-group-read-group                   1           8.071748      8.071748
  gnus-summary-read-group                 1           8.071693      8.071693
  gnus-summary-read-group-1               1           8.071681      8.071681
  gnus-select-newsgroup                   1           7.30483       7.30483
  gnus-summary-limit-children             1324        7.1840629999  0.0054260294
  gnus-fetch-headers                      1           6.445576      6.445576
  gnus-get-newsgroup-headers-xover        1           6.420683      6.420683
  gnus-articles-to-read                   1           0.818016      0.818016
  gnus-summary-prepare                    1           0.573297      0.573297
  gnus-summary-prepare-threads            1           0.553526      0.553526
  gnus-run-hooks                          1337        0.2399320000  0.0001794554
  gnus-summary-highlight-line             1326        0.2316510000  0.0001746990
  gnus-sort-threads-recursive             837         0.1313619999  0.0001569438
  gnus-summary-initial-limit              1           0.10973       0.10973
  gnus-summary-highlight-line-0           1326        0.0972370000  7.333...e-05
  gnus-summary-maybe-hide-threads         1           0.04301       0.04301
  gnus-summary-hide-all-threads           1           0.043         0.043
  gnus-summary-next-thread                44          0.0411179999  0.0009344999
  gnus-summary-go-to-next-thread          44          0.040834      0.0009280454
  gnus-retrieve-headers                   2           0.03551       0.017755
  gnus-map-function                       1352        0.0294150000  2.175...e-05

which seem much more sensible.

Now restoring my summary line format and removing only the "%6V" format
specifier gives almost the same sane results.

-- 
Francis