Re: Speed up startup of octave

[Paul]

Mike Miller <mtmiller <at> ieee.org> writes:
>On Sun, Aug 11, 2013 at 17:18:31 +0000, Paul wrote:
>> I am constantly shelling out of a text editor (vim) to pipe text
>> into octave.  But octave takes seconds to launch each time.  Is
>> there a way to speed it up?
> 
> Do you have a lot of packages installed and auto-loaded at startup?
> In my experience, assuming Linux, this is most likely the cause of
> slow starting, not Octave itself.
> 
> You can add the -f/--norc option to prevent octaverc scripts from
> running and auto-loaded packages from loading. Or you can do "pkg
> rebuild -noauto" for each package you don't need loaded all the
> time.  This may speed startup quite a bit:
> 
>   $ time /usr/bin/octave -q --eval pi
>   ans =  3.1416
> 
>   real        0m1.061s
>   user        0m0.964s
>   sys 0m0.080s
>   $ time /usr/bin/octave -qf --eval pi
>   ans =  3.1416
> 
>   real        0m0.064s
>   user        0m0.044s
>   sys 0m0.016s
> 
>> As a nonideal solution, I can keep a command line window open with
>> an interactive octave session constantly running, then use it to
>> repeatedly source a script for which I have a separate edit session
>> constantly open.  I can have a second edit session open for the
>> output of the repeatedly sourced script.  This is way less
>> convenient than simply shelling out of a single edit session,
>> without having to use an extra window for octave.
> 
> You could look at any of the solutions to run interactive processes
> from within vim. I just found these with some quick searching, I
> have not tested either:
> 
> * https://code.google.com/p/conque/
> * https://github.com/jpalardy/vim-slime

I think it might be just my installation or host system rather than
startups.  Using --verbose, I get:

   executing commands from
                   /usr/share/octave/site/m/startup/octaverc ... done.
   executing commands from
                  /usr/share/octave/3.6.2/m/startup/octaverc ... done.

The first is empty and the 2nd is almost empty:

   read_readline_init_file (sprintf ("%s%s%s",
                 octave_config_info ("startupfiledir"),
                 filesep, "inputrc"));

   if (strcmp (PAGER (), "less") && isempty (getenv ("LESS")))
  PAGER_FLAGS ( \
      '-e -X -P"-- less ?pB(%pB\\%):--. (f)orward, (b)ack, (q)uit$"');
   endif

   ## This appears here instead of in the pkg/PKG_ADD file so that
   ## --norc will also skip automatic loading of packages.
   pkg ("load", "auto");
   atexit ("__finish__");

The actual time is:

   time /usr/bin/octave -qf --norc --no-window-system --eval pi
   ans =  3.1416

   real    0m0.588s
   user    0m0.171s
   sys     0m0.405s

I find this actually quite acceptable, but it is being done at home
rather than in the office.  It's a lot slower in the office, but I
work off network files (which might somehow cause extra delay).  I
will repeat this time test in the office.

Thanks for the pointers to conque and vim-slime.  It looks like an
interesting read.