[slime-devel] Debugger slowness is killing me ...

[Helmut Eller]

Peter Seibel <peter at javamonkey.com> writes:

> Or is that crazy? If not, if someone was feeling really ambitious,
> maybe this could be developed into a general facility--provide a way
> for SWANK to send emacs an object that contains a short string and an
> id which emacs can then use to request a more elaborate string
> representation. Then on the emacs side provide a function to insert
> such an object into a buffer with appropriate overlays or properties
> or whatever to make the short string "live" so clicking on it or
> hitting a key while the cursor is in it causes emacs to replace it
> with the longer version.

Less ambitious people can try to tune their printer variables a bit.
My settings are

  *print-length* 10
  *print-level*  4
  *print-circle* nil

  swank::*swank-pprint-length* nil
  swank::*swank-pprint-level* nil
  swank::*swank-pprint-circle* t

No, I don't see the full list, but ten elements are enough for me. If
I need more details I use C-c C-p or the inspector. 

Setting slime-log-events to nil is a minor speed improvement.

It may also help to set Emacs' gc-cons-threshold to a larger value
than the default 400000.  The error message in your example is 668857
characters long and will probably trigger one or two collections.
AFAIK, Emacs' GC is not generational and a collection can take quite a
while if you have many buffers open and lots of stuff loaded.

Helmut.