Doom keep on compiling over and over a few packages on startup

[jman-schief]

I confirm that...

• I have searched the issue tracker, documentation, FAQ, Discourse, and Google, in case this issue has already been reported/resolved.
• I have read "How to Debug Issues", and will use it to provide as much information about this issue as possible.
• The issue can be reproduced on the latest available commit of Doom.
• The issue can be reproduced on a stable release of Emacs, such as 27, 28, or 29. (Unstable versions end in .50, .60, or .9x)

Expected behavior

When Doom in installed and configured, I expect no more bytecode compilation.

Current behavior

Everytime I start Doom, the following packages get recompiled:

Full *Async-native-compile-log* buffer

Compiling /usr/share/emacs/29.4/lisp/emacs-lisp/subr-x.el.gz...
uncompressing subr-x.el.gz...
uncompressing subr-x.el.gz...done
Compiling /usr/share/emacs/29.4/lisp/emacs-lisp/pcase.el.gz...
uncompressing pcase.el.gz...
uncompressing pcase.el.gz...done
Compiling /usr/share/emacs/29.4/lisp/emacs-lisp/gv.el.gz...
uncompressing gv.el.gz...
uncompressing gv.el.gz...done
Compiling /usr/share/emacs/29.4/lisp/emacs-lisp/cl-lib.el.gz...
uncompressing cl-lib.el.gz...
uncompressing cl-lib.el.gz...done
Compiling /usr/share/emacs/29.4/lisp/emacs-lisp/cl-loaddefs.el.gz...
uncompressing cl-loaddefs.el.gz...
uncompressing cl-loaddefs.el.gz...done
Compiling /usr/share/emacs/29.4/lisp/emacs-lisp/cl-macs.el.gz...
uncompressing cl-macs.el.gz...
uncompressing cl-macs.el.gz...done
Compiling /usr/share/emacs/29.4/lisp/emacs-lisp/cl-seq.el.gz...
uncompressing cl-seq.el.gz...
uncompressing cl-seq.el.gz...done
Compiling /usr/share/emacs/29.4/lisp/net/tramp-loaddefs.el.gz...
uncompressing tramp-loaddefs.el.gz...
uncompressing tramp-loaddefs.el.gz...done
Compilation finished.

Steps to reproduce

1. Open Doom
2. go and check the *Async-native-compile-log* buffer

System Information

https://paste.sr.ht/~jman/a50ff018cb6217373b300fc1a0975b862f8ad04f

[hlissner]

I can't reproduce this on any of my test environments (Arch Linux, Ubuntu, NixOS, MacOS, and Windows; on 28.2, 29.3, 30.0.50, or 31.0.50), so I suspect a local or 29.4 issue (e.g. an issue with the Emacs package served by your OS package manager).

A few things to try:

1. Delete your envvar file (i.e. run doom env clear) -- it might've captured an Emacs envvar, like EMACSLOADPATH, EMACSPATH, EMACSDOC, etc.
2. Make sure you haven't modified any native-comp-* variables in your config, particularly native-comp-jit-compilation-deny-list or native-comp-deferred-compilation-deny-list.
3. It's possible that those packages are natively compiled before Doom loads, typically because a site-lisp package (installed via your OS package manager, rather than from within Doom/Emacs), like mu4e or vterm, loads them before Doom starts up. If you have any of these, try uninstalling them and see if the issue goes away. If it does, this is an issue for whomever maintains the Emacs package for your distro's package manager.
4. Try disabling deferred/async compilation by adding (setq native-comp-jit-compilation nil) to $DOOMDIR/init.el.
5. Are you absolutely sure you're starting the same Emacs as you doom synced with? I.e. Your doom info shows EMACS=/usr/bin/emacs, but does your M-x doom/info show the same?
6. Try downgrading to 29.3 (or upgrading to 30+). There have been sporadic reports of issues on 29.4 recently.

[peterhoeg]

I have seen this too and it was "fixed" by blowing away all the local build directories and native comp build caches. Then doom sync and things were back to normal.

This was emacs 29.3

[dwinkler1]

@peterhoeg could you please elaborate on which directories you deleted?

[hlissner]

@dwinkler1:

# EMACSDIR = where you cloned Doom, e.g. ~/.emacs.d or ~/.config/emacs
rm -rf $EMACSDIR/.local/straight/build-*
rm -rf $EMACSDIR/.local/cache/eln/*

doom sync

[dwinkler1]

Thank you!

[jman-schief]

Thanks everyone for the suggestions. Unfortunately none of them helped. I've even reinstalled Doom and Emacs from scratch. I've tried installing Doom in ~/.config/emacs instead of ~/.doom and unsetting $EMACSDIR and $DOOMDIR, nothing changed.

The funny thing is that only the packages I mention in the opening comment get recompiled everytime. There must be a kind of "flag" somewhere that triggers bytecode recompilation. I have no idea of where to look for where this logic happens but I'lll report if I make progresses.

(Else feel free to close if we are 110% sure this has nothing to do with Doom)

[jman-schief]

Sounds related to this message in the Discourse forum "Emacs keeping running async compilation".

[jman-schief]

Can reproduce on a fresh install of Emacs 29.3:

git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/doomemacs/doomemacs ~/.config/emacs
~/.config/emacs/bin/doom install
~/.config/emacs/bin/doom sync
~/.config/emacs/bin/doom run (and let the first async bytecode compilation finish)

Now I restart doom and look at the *Async-native-compile-log* buffer, I observe the bytecode compilation. Bytecode files are located in ~/.config/emacs/.local/cache/eln/29.3-.../ and are overwritten with identical files (size and name) everytime.