Just an update for everyone in this thread. After the first time to plot analysis in
https://github.com/JuliaPlots/Plots.jl/pull/2157
established that it really is all inference time (and hence solvable from Julia and not an LLVM issue), a new research software engineer has started in the Julia Lab for working on this problem. We have decided it’s probably best to probably not try and solving this specifically for Plots.jl, but more generally. We had a meeting with a bunch of compiler folk and it resulted in these issues:
https://github.com/JuliaLang/julia/issues/33326
https://github.com/JuliaLang/julia/issues/33333
So I’m not going to promise anything quick or soon (I’m not even a compiler guy! Just doing what I can!), but those are some concrete ideas for things that would reduce compiler latency for all users, and hopefully handle Plots.jl. If you’re interested, I’d follow those and cheer on any developments. This will take some time, but hopefully it can be fixed the correct way and all packages will benefit from it.
And as always, even though there’s a concrete plan, everything is always limited by resources (time, tests, money, etc.). If you do want to help out, there are likely ways to pitch in, so don’t be afraid to ask. For example, maybe one thing that could help is to put together a script/repo that runs all of the known compile-time explosion examples to make it easier for the compiler engineers to run and test changes.