Startup time for default environment slow

Developing with flox
1

I’ve been using flox significantly and have been trying to replace homebrew with flox. I have a default environment with all of the tools I use, but activating my default environment with every new window is pretty slow (3-5 seconds). This happens for each new terminal window I open, which is pretty frequent for me.

Is there anyway to speed this up when using the default environment?

~ on ☁️  (us-west-1) on ☁️  endallk007@gmail.com
❯ time  zsh -i -c exit
ℹ️  Upgrades are available for packages in 'kendallm/default'.
Use 'flox upgrade' to get the latest.

zsh -i -c exit  0.98s user 1.23s system 90% cpu 2.444 total

I profiled just the activate command with zprof to see what was going on with flox and there seems to be a lot of work happening. Ideally I would replace homebrew with flox for my main dev setup, but the startup time is a bit rough for me.

zmodload zsh/zprof
eval "$(flox activate -m run -d $HOME)"
zprof

num  calls                time                       self            name
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 1)    1         153.09   153.09   43.52%    153.09   153.09   43.52%  compdump
 2)    1         351.70   351.70   99.99%     79.38    79.38   22.57%  compinit
 3)  957          74.09     0.08   21.06%     74.09     0.08   21.06%  compdef
 4)    2          45.14    22.57   12.83%     45.14    22.57   12.83%  compaudit
 5)    1           0.05     0.05    0.01%      0.05     0.05    0.01%  add-zsh-hook

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 2)    1         351.70   351.70   99.99%     79.38    79.38   22.57%  compinit
       1/2        45.14    45.14   12.83%      0.16     0.16             compaudit [4]
     957/957      74.09     0.08   21.06%     74.09     0.08             compdef [3]
       1/1       153.09   153.09   43.52%    153.09   153.09             compdump [1]

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

       1/1       153.09   153.09   43.52%    153.09   153.09             compinit [2]
 1)    1         153.09   153.09   43.52%    153.09   153.09   43.52%  compdump

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

     957/957      74.09     0.08   21.06%     74.09     0.08             compinit [2]
 3)  957          74.09     0.08   21.06%     74.09     0.08   21.06%  compdef

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

       1/2        45.14    45.14   12.83%      0.16     0.16             compinit [2]
       1/2        44.98    44.98   12.79%     44.98    44.98             compaudit [4]
 4)    2          45.14    22.57   12.83%     45.14    22.57   12.83%  compaudit
       1/2        44.98    44.98   12.79%     44.98    44.98             compaudit [4]

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 5)    1           0.05     0.05    0.01%      0.05     0.05    0.01%  add-zsh-hook
2

We’ve actually made a few improvements that should land in the next release. If you want to test those out, you can grab an installer for the latest commit on main from https://shipit.flox.dev/

As a temporary workaround, it looks like you’ve pulled an environment from FloxHub. If you detach it from FloxHub with flox pull --copy that should be a little faster.

Does it feel usable after either of those, or still no? There are still some other things that we’d like to speed up

1 Like
3

Detaching from FloxHub helps significantly! With detaching from FloxHub, is there a better way to keep changes in sync other than force pushing?

4

The performance fixes are out now with Flox v1.3.13. This should apply to environments irrespective of whether they are attached to floxhub or not.