Re: bug#30854: 27.0.50; Speeding up package.el startup

[Arthur Miller]

Stefan Kangas <stefankangas@gmail.com> writes:

> Arthur Miller <arthur.miller@live.com> writes:
>
>>> Yes: `package-activate-all` (called from `startup.el`).
>>
>> See if this is acceptable. I tried to make as few chagnes to package.el
>> as possible, and I didn't wont to introduce a new file, so I just put
>> the relevant files into startup.el.
>
> FWIW, I think a new file would be better.  We could then also move the
> bits and pieces from subr.el to this more logical place.
Aha. I didn't know there are pieces in subr.el also in play here. I am
not so well introduced into internals.

> (On a related note, I'm not sure that making `package-activate-all'
> disappear is TRT.  I think it is useful to keep that function.)
When you say "to keep that function" you mean to run it at startup, even
when quickstart is activated or you mean to keep it at all as
functionality in package.el?

For the latter, I haven't removed anything. When quickstart is active,
and the package-quickstart.el exists, then we don't need to run it. We
just need to make Emacs aware of autoloads and load-paths where to find
those files refered by autoloads. That is qhat package-quickstart.el
does, so we can just loaded. At least what I think. Seems to work.

User will have to run package-initialize at later time for any
package.el functions (refreshing contenst, installing, unisntalling
etc). For me it is quite acceptable cost for the performance gain.

>> I am not sure about package--activated; if quicstart should set it to 't
>> or not. I don't think is needed, and am not sure if it is straight wrong
>> to do too in quickstart, so I don't do that.
>
> It is still useful if we keep `package-activate-all', I think.
>
> But my preference would in any case be to make any functional changes
> separately from this refactoring.
This does not do any functional change other but avoiding to load package.el
when quickstart is active. If a user would really like to have
package.el loaded from the start time, than it is just to call
(package-initialize) in user init file?

> Does your patch avoid loading package.el?
Yes. When package-quickstart.el exists in user-emacs-directory.
If that file does not exists then everything is loaded just as before,
and (package-activate-all) will be run as normally.