[Octave-bug-tracker] [bug #49193] help slow because of makeinfo

[Mike Miller]

Update of bug #49193 (project octave):

                Severity:              3 - Normal => 1 - Wish               
                Priority:              5 - Normal => 3 - Low                
                  Status:                    None => Postponed              
                 Release:                   3.8.2 => dev                    
        Operating System:               GNU/Linux => Any                    

    _______________________________________________________

Follow-up Comment #1:

Please test with makeinfo 6.3 if you are able to. Some notable changes between
5.0 and 6.3 include "Some Perl modules have been rewritten in C to increase
speed" and "a bit faster".

That said, yes makeinfo is still perl and it is still noticeably slower than
makeinfo 4.13. You are free to use 4.13 on your end, as you have done. Octave
won't bundle GNU texinfo with its own distribution, but users and distributors
are free to do so if they want.

Something could be done with the doc cache. Such an approach would also have
to take into account user .m function files on the load path, which may change
or may not exist at any moment.

Another option would be to pursue another doc markup language and processor,
but this probably won't be done since Texinfo is the GNU project recommended
documentation format, and the same function doc strings are used both for
online help as well as for the full manual.

I'll leave this bug open as a wishlist improvement if someone wants to pursue
some optimization on how doc strings are loaded and stored in memory.

    _______________________________________________________

Reply to this item at:

  <http://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?49193>

_______________________________________________
  Message sent via/by Savannah
  http://savannah.gnu.org/