[Python-Dev] Python startup time

[Larry Hastings]

On 07/19/2017 05:59 AM, Victor Stinner wrote:
> Mercurial startup time is already 45.8x slower than Git whereas tested
> Mercurial runs on Python 2.7.12. Now try to sell Python 3 to Mercurial
> developers, with a startup time 2x - 3x slower...

When Matt Mackall spoke at the Python Language Summit some years back, I 
recall that he specifically complained about Python startup time.  He 
said Python 3 "didn't solve any problems for [them]"--they'd already 
solved their Unicode hygiene problems--and that Python's slow startup 
time was already a big problem for them. Python 3 being /even slower/ to 
start was absolutely one of the reasons why they didn't want to upgrade.

You might think "what's a few milliseconds matter".  But if you run 
hundreds of commands in a shell script it adds up.  git's speed is one 
of the few bright spots in its UX, and hg's comparative slowness here is 
a palpable disadvantage.


> So please continue efforts for make Python startup even faster to beat
> all other programming languages, and finally convince Mercurial to
> upgrade ;-)

I believe Mercurial is, finally, slowly porting to Python 3.

    https://www.mercurial-scm.org/wiki/Python3

Nevertheless, I can't really be annoyed or upset at them moving slowly 
to adopt Python 3, as Matt's objections were entirely legitimate.


Cheers,


//arry/
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