Re: Skipping unexec via a big .elc file

[Phillip Lord]

Ken Raeburn <address@hidden> writes:

> On Dec 19, 2016, at 10:09, Phillip Lord <address@hidden> wrote:
>
>> I looked at this a little and in fact the boot code that I have written
>> does tell you exactly which autoloads you need to get temacs to work --
>> it's not very many, I think that there are only 10 or so (bytecomp.el
>> for instance).
>
> This sounds like it could be the biggest help for startup time at this point.
> Are you going to look further into making a lightweight loadup file?
>
> Looking at ldefs-boot.el and loaddefs.el, and contemplating the parsing of
> them, I wonder: If we go the big-elc route, can we defer loading the doc
> strings until they’re actually needed?  Perhaps using the “(#$ . nnnn)” syntax
> used in .elc files, or somehow pointing at the real .el or .elc files defining
> the functions?  Maybe just omit the function doc strings, if the help code
> does something reasonable in that case?

In the ldefs-boot-auto.el file, there are no doc strings. This was
mostly because it was extra effort to add them, and they made no
difference for the use intended.

One simple way to lazy load doc strings would be to fiddle with help
code so that it loads the relevant file before looking for the
docstring. This does assume that the all the code in dumped.elc is
idempotent, though.

Incidentally, unless I have misunderstood, dumped.elc will duplicate
code also found in other .elc files (say, byte-run.elc, and
nadvice.elc)? Is dumped.elc going to detect these dependencies and
redump as necessary?

Phil