Very long vim startup time caused by syntastic on OSX about syntastic

[cehoffman]

I did a few tests using the --startuptime measurement and what I came up with is that syntastic takes approximately 3/4 of my startup time initializing scripts. I don't have a small system either, there are 61 individual plugins I have tracked.

The columns here are time spent on script + vim's time, vim's time, and the action/script. It is sorted by the first column with most time at the bottom. This first one is when I had syntastic enabled on load.

004.627  004.627: vim-delimitMate/plugin/delimitMate.vim
004.859  004.859: vim-unimpaired/plugin/unimpaired.vim
004.935  004.262: vim-easymotion/plugin/EasyMotion.vim
005.990: shell ini
007.334  007.334: vim-fugitive/plugin/fugitive.vim
009.751: expanding
011.539  011.539: vim-nerd-commenter/plugin/NERD_commenter.vim
012.289  012.289: vim-textobj-rubyblock/plugin/textobj/rubyblock.vim
013.193: loading p
017.100  015.738: plasticcodewrap.vim
017.268  016.279: vim-textobj-entire/plugin/textobj/entire.vim
017.497  017.497: vim-notmuch-ruby/plugin/notmuch-ruby.vim
029.354  025.850: vim/runtime/filetype.vim
031.949  030.893: vim-nerdtree/plugin/NERD_tree.vim
056.747  056.747: vim-ultisnips/plugin/UltiSnips.vim
090.315  039.835: $HOME/.vimrc
519.696  519.696: vim-syntastic/plugin/syntastic.vim

For comparison this is without syntastic.

003.395  002.826: sourcing vim-easymotion/plugin/EasyMotion.vim
003.544: reading viminfo
003.835  003.835: sourcing vim-delimitMate/plugin/delimitMate.vim
004.270: shell init
004.376  004.376: sourcing vim-unimpaired/plugin/unimpaired.vim
004.391: VimEnter autocomma
005.267  005.267: sourcing vim-fugitive/plugin/fugitive.vim
008.692: expanding argument
010.390  010.390: sourcing vim-nerd-commenter/plugin/NERD_commenter.vim
011.194: loading plugins
011.388  011.388: sourcing vim-textobj-rubyblock/plugin/textobj/rubyblock.vim
012.061  011.412: sourcing vim-textobj-entire/plugin/textobj/entire.vim
015.753  014.708: sourcing plasticcodewrap.vim
018.859  018.859: sourcing vim-notmuch-ruby/plugin/notmuch-ruby.vim
023.121  020.586: sourcing runtime/filetype.vim
023.339  022.192: sourcing vim-nerdtree/plugin/NERD_tree.vim
050.434  050.434: sourcing vim-ultisnips/plugin/UltiSnips.vim
076.611  033.631: sourcing $HOME/.vimrc

Something that might be of help is I recently had a similar situation with my vimrc. It was taking about the same amount of time as syntatstic. What I found to be the problem was 2 lines. I had a check for an executable() and a system call to that executable for some basic configuration information. Because the time is spent mostly in vim, I suspect syntastic might have a similar issue.

For reference, I am also on a Mac (10.7.3) using MacVim Snapshot 64 compiled through homebrew against ruby 1.9.3-p125 and the system python and Xcode 4.3.2 and I used vim from the console on zsh on a custom iTerm2 build in tmux.

To repeat the tests you can do the following:

vim --startuptime vim.log -c q
vim -c 'r ! cat vim.log| sort -k 2'

[scrooloose]

That's pretty strange. The most likely thing is that it is running a syntax checker over the file you start vim with and it is taking ages to return.

Is it happening with all filetypes or just some specific types?

For a temporary fix you could use this:

let g:pathogen_disabled = ['syntastic']
function! ActivateSyntastic() abort                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               
    set rtp+=~/.vim/bundle/syntastic                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 
    runtime plugin/syntastic.vim                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  
endfunction  

This tells pathogen not to load it at startup, and provides a function to do so on request. You can call it via ":call ActivateSyntastic()" or make a mapping or command to do so.

[johnhamelink]

I've also noticed this.

Following this tutorial: http://usevim.com/2012/04/18/startuptime/ seems to prove that syntastic is the problem here, unfortunately (I'm also on OSX).

[cehoffman]

It looks like the startup delay was due to a system call like I thought. I delayed the system call until the first SyntasticMake is called on cehoffman@98b7e0e01b496d975bb12606674d5b6d6f10a4de.

The time for syntastic to start now takes just 000.866msec.

[johnhamelink]

@cehoffman sorry to be dumb, does that mean that syntastic has the problem, or is to do with vim on mac specifically?

[cehoffman]

@johnhamelink well there is most likely something at play for the exceedingly long startup times for mattmartini. However there is a very real comparatively expensive startup call syntastic makes that other plugins do not. It was/is a simple fix with no adverse effects. From my initial search at the main file that is loaded on startup I don't see anything else that seems like a likely candidate to cause problems for anyone.

Also, as you can see from my test results on at least one Mac syntastic is loading very quickly (with the small change) and was only at half a second without the change.

[mattmartini]

I tried the patch and my vim startup times are now about the same with or without syntastic ( < 0.2sec)

On May 8, 2012, at 11:20 AM, Chris Hoffman wrote:

@johnhamelink well there is most likely something at play for the exceedingly long startup times for mattmartini. However there is a very real comparatively expensive startup call syntastic makes that other plugins do not. It was/is a simple fix with no adverse effects. From my initial search at the main file that is loaded on startup I don't see anything else that seems like a likely candidate to cause problems for anyone.

Also, as you can see from my test results on at least one Mac syntastic is loading very quickly (with the small change) and was only at half a second without the change.

---

Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub:
#91 (comment)

[grr]

+1. Please merge this, it really makes a difference.

[scrooloose]

Hey guys,

I have merged @cehoffman's fix in. Can you confirm that it fixes the start up time?