Re: [VM] debugging why emacs / vm becomes non-responsive

[Uday Reddy]

Kyle Farrell writes:

> I have two instances of emacs running, one for VM and another doing
> other tasks (org-mode mainly).  I only see the non-responsiveness in
> the VM instance (which is why I'm starting here).  When emacs becomes
> non-responsive, I sometimes see a garbage collection messages.  The
> non-responsiveness does not seem tied to any particular action.

Garbage collection and auto-save are two Emacs features that affect VM.  How
long these things take depends on the quality of your hardware.  You can try
reducing the size of the mail folders, e.g., by archiving old mail, or
switching to an IMAP server and keep messages externally.  You can also try
tweaking the auto-save settings.  Here is what I use:

(setq auto-save-timeout 300)
(setq auto-save-interval 1000)          ; up from the default of 300


> I'm using VM version 8.1.93a on GNU Emacs 23.3.1 (also verified with
> 23.1) on Windows Vista.  The emacs process is at roughly 50 megs,
> which should not tax the system.

You might also switch to VM 8.2.0a, which would have some bug fixes that
might affect performance.

Cheers,
Uday