So much work has been done to improve julia compilation and remove invalidations. Things really feel a lot snappier to use. But there is still the problem of packages that were written without much thought to startup time, and TTFX - the time-to-first whatever a package does most, is sometimes real…

Use precompile when the function has side effects, like opening a window. Maybe we should also design packages so that most functions dont have side effects, like in many functional languages. To make precompilayion easier. It tells you something… it sounds like the time is in some async tasks? Tha…

The package is here , but it’s in explorative state and the code quality is so bad that I’m a bit ashamed to share :smiley: (type instability etc). The flame graph looks like this: [image] corresponding data The long flat task.jl on the right looks suspicious, but I don’t know where it comes from…

the right part comes from the (unused) threads. Should go away with a single thread.

Yes, having a simple checklist for package authors would be a good idea. What to think about when writing the code, and what to do as a “compile time optimization pass” after writing the code. Maybe I was too pessimistic. My impression after having tried to use SnoopCompile on a few of my own packa…

How does one check the effect of precompilation on TTFX? Just time using with and without?

@PetrKryslUCSD im using TTFX like time-to-first-plot. The time to load a package + the time to do its main thing X that it does, using @time thefunction(x). My PR above made blinks load in 1s, but Window() takes 15 so its still not a huge gain.

Yeah SnoopCompile is more complicated. I mostly just use ProfileView.jl and Cthulhu.jl and give up after that. Anything really bad is pretty obvious in ProfileView. But I would also like to know how to use SnoopCompile better.

So, inspired by this thread I decided to ProfileView the TTFX for my package, DFTK, which currently stands at a ridiculous 90s. About 1/5 of that time is in inference, without reference to package code. Some places I can recognize are functions that have nested functions, but that is a pattern I use…

[image] Why isn't `size` always inferred to be an Integer? I don’t think the compiler reads the docs. I wander if the compiler could read assertions, though, and use that information. Question more on the subject: Can someone provide a clear step by step of what they are doing to produce thes…

[image] DNF: I don’t think the compiler reads the docs. So let it also solve this issue :smiling_imp:

Taking TTFX seriously: Can we make common packages faster to load and use

General Usage Performance

Topic		Replies	Views
Any way to speed up loading large precompiled packages? General Usage precompilation , ttfp , ttfx	35	3711	May 15, 2023
Very slow time to first plot, 2022 General Usage ttfp	72	5448	May 8, 2023
Startup time of 1000 packages – 53% slower in Julia 1.12 vs 1.10 Internals & Design performance , ttfx , latency	81	6756	November 14, 2025
Building a PC optimized for "time to first plot" Performance	86	5252	October 23, 2022
Help reducing compilation and inference time Performance compilation , latency	71	1924	July 11, 2024

Taking TTFX seriously: Can we make common packages faster to load and use

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