boot-clj/boot

Can startup time be improved?

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#106 opened on Jan 28, 2015

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 (7 comments) (0 reactions) (0 assignees)Clojure (1,748 stars) (178 forks)batch import
Enhancementhelp wanted

Description

I understand that this is a hard problem, and that Leiningen isn't any better at this, but I think the major deal-breaker for using boot CLI scripts is the SLOW startup time. I've tried using tools like drip to help improve this, but drip doesn't help at all since the main source of the slowdown is not JVM startup time but loading the Clojure jars. I wrote a persistent REPL tool called quick-clojure to try and deal with this, but running on a cached JVM has its own set of issues. I have no idea how to solve this, but I thought it was worth bringing up.

Contributor guide

Tech stack
None
Domain
performancetooling
Issue type
performance
DifficultyEstimated implementation difficulty for a new contributor, from 1 for very small changes to 5 for expert-level work.
4
Estimated timeA rough time range for an experienced contributor to investigate, implement, test, and prepare a pull request.
over 1 week
Activity statusHow available the issue appears right now: fresh, active, stale, blocked, or waiting on maintainer input.
stale
ClarityHow clearly the issue explains the expected change, acceptance criteria, and next step.
unclear
Prerequisites
ClojureJVM startup optimizationBoot internals
Newbie friendlinessA 1-100 score estimating how approachable this issue is for first-time contributors.
15
Research direction
This issue discusses improving boot's startup time. There are no linked PRs or recent activity. Comments indicate that the main bottleneck is loading Clojure jars, not JVM startup. To contribute, one should investigate the boot classloading mechanism and explore strategies like lazy loading or pre compilation of namespaces.