Significant latency upon remote evaluation

[ErikPrantare]

Describe the bug
When evaluating an expression with nyxt --remote --eval,
there is a significant delay on evaluation compared with evaluating through slime, for example.

Precise recipe to reproduce the issue

• Start nyxt
• Open multiple buffers
• Ensure remote-execution-p is set to t
• Run nyxt --remote --eval '(switch-buffer-next)' in a shell

Information

• OS name+version: Guix 5e4ec8218142eee8e6e148e787381a5ef891c5b1
• Graphics card and driver: Don't know
• Desktop environment / Window manager name+version: StumpWM 22.05
• How you installed Nyxt (Guix pack, package manager, build from source): guix package -i nyxt
• Information from show-system-information:

Nyxt version: 2.2.4
Renderer version: GI-GTK
Operating system kernel: Linux 5.19.16-gnu
Lisp implementation: SBCL 2.2.11 (Dynamic space size: 3221225472)
Features: (:WEBKIT2 :WEBKIT2-2.36 :WEBKIT2-CORS-ALLOWLIST :WEBKIT2-PASTE-PLAINTEXT
 :WEBKIT2-TRACKING :WEBKIT2-MUTE :WEBKIT2-EMOJI :WEBKIT2-MEDIA
 :WEBKIT2-SANDBOXING :GTK-3-22 :GTK-3-20 :GTK-3-18 :GTK-3-16 :GTK-3-14
 :GTK-3-12 :GTK-3-10 :GTK-3-8 :GTK-3-6 :GTK-3-4 :GTK :GDK-3-22 :GDK-3-20
 :GDK-3-18 :GDK-3-16 :GDK-3-14 :GDK-3-12 :GDK-3-10 :GDK-3-8 :GDK-3-6 :GDK-3-4
 :CAIRO-1-10 :CAIRO-1-12 :GDK-PIXBUF :GLIB-2-30 :GLIB-2-32 :GLIB-2-34
 :GLIB-2-36 :GLIB-2-38 :GLIB-2-40 :GLIB-2-42 :GLIB-2-44 :GLIB-2-46 :GLIB-2-48
 :GLIB-2-50 :GLIB-2-52 :GLIB-2-54 :GLIB-2-56 :GLIB-2-58 :GLIB :NYXT-2
 :FSET-EXT-STRINGS :CUSTOM-HASH-TABLE-NATIVE :CLIPBOARD-CONTENT-METHOD :SWANK
 :PLUMP-UTF-32 :GLOBAL-VARS :PARENSCRIPT :NAMED-READTABLES :LPARALLEL
 :21BIT-CHARS :CHUNGA :FLEXI-STREAMS :CLOSER-MOP :CL-PPCRE-UNICODE :CL-UNICODE
 :CL-PPCRE :BORDEAUX-THREADS :LPARALLEL.WITH-CLTL2 :LPARALLEL.WITH-CAS
 :LPARALLEL.WITH-STEALING-SCHEDULER :SPLIT-SEQUENCE CHIPZ-SYSTEM:GRAY-STREAMS
 CFFI-FEATURES:FLAT-NAMESPACE CFFI-FEATURES:X86-64 CFFI-FEATURES:UNIX :CFFI
 CFFI-SYS::FLAT-NAMESPACE ALEXANDRIA::SEQUENCE-EMPTYP :FAST-IO-SV :FAST-IO
 :SBCL-USES-SB-ROTATE-BYTE :ASDF-SYSTEM-CONNECTIONS :CL-JSON-CLOS :CL-JSON
 :THREAD-SUPPORT :ASDF3.3 :ASDF3.2 :ASDF3.1 :ASDF3 :ASDF2 :ASDF :OS-UNIX
 :NON-BASE-CHARS-EXIST-P :ASDF-UNICODE :ARENA-ALLOCATOR :X86-64 :GENCGC :64-BIT
 :ANSI-CL :COMMON-LISP :ELF :IEEE-FLOATING-POINT :LINUX :LITTLE-ENDIAN
 :PACKAGE-LOCAL-NICKNAMES :SB-CORE-COMPRESSION :SB-LDB :SB-PACKAGE-LOCKS
 :SB-THREAD :SB-UNICODE :SBCL :UNIX)

ASDF version: 3.3.5
ASDF registries: (NYXT-SOURCE-REGISTRY ENVIRONMENT-SOURCE-REGISTRY USER-SOURCE-REGISTRY
                      USER-SOURCE-REGISTRY-DIRECTORY
                      DEFAULT-USER-SOURCE-REGISTRY SYSTEM-SOURCE-REGISTRY
                      SYSTEM-SOURCE-REGISTRY-DIRECTORY
                      DEFAULT-SYSTEM-SOURCE-REGISTRY)
Critical dependencies: (/gnu/store/xrr6jnmk88mpadwmx9mlkdydl3s0bwh2-sbcl-cl-cffi-gtk-0.11.2-2.e9a46df/share/common-lisp/sbcl/cl-cffi-gtk/gtk/cl-cffi-gtk.asd
 /gnu/store/w64c12i7y7vcc9vdys0wj4vyqq7vfch7-sbcl-cl-gobject-introspection-0.3-1.d0136c8/share/common-lisp/sbcl/cl-gobject-introspection/cl-gobject-introspection.asd
 /gnu/store/91y87sr1zr2qdaxk6cfzsib6792jbahj-sbcl-cl-webkit-3.5.6/share/common-lisp/sbcl/cl-webkit/webkit2/cl-webkit2.asd)

Guix version:

More discussion here:
https://discourse.atlas.engineer/t/evaluating-expressions-from-terminal-as-if-evaluated-from-the-window/621/5

[Ambrevar]

The slowdown is probably due to the config parsing. Try nyxt --failsafe --remote --eval, it should significantly speed up the process.

[Ambrevar]

Actually... Is it ever useful to parse the config when --remote? Seems to me that the answer is no, since the command line args are not evaluated.

Thoughts? @aadcg @aartaka

[aartaka]

Config is useless in this scenario, yes.

[aartaka]

Well, maybe for socket position if it's redefined in the config file, but that's the forbidden magic we don't mess with here :)

[aadcg]

I agree with the both of you!

[Ambrevar]

Well, maybe for socket position if it's redefined in the config file, but that's the forbidden magic we don't mess with here :)

Not even that, because the socket path, like the config path, can only be tweaked via command-line arguments / environment variables.

[aartaka]

Then we're absolutely safe to ignore the config when --remote --eval!

[Ambrevar]

To do:

• Report the socket path as log:info.
• --failsafe should not disable the socket with --remote.
• Document the above behaviour in nyxt --help.
• Honor "Without --quit or --remote, the evaluation is done after parsing the config file".
• Ensure that --eval can be specified multiple times.

[ErikPrantare]

The slowdown is probably due to the config parsing. Try nyxt --failsafe --remote --eval, it should significantly speed up the process.

My version does not seem to have --failsafe, but --no-init --no-auto-config yield similar latency for me.