ess taking a *huge* time to load in emacs

[lbraglia]

Dear all,

I've encountered the same problem reported (likely) by @juliangilbey here

https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=828046

This is without ESS

l@p6k:/media/shared$ time emacs -batch -eval '(nil)'
Loading 00debian-vars...
Loading /etc/emacs/site-start.d/50auctex.el (source)...
Loading /usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/auctex.el (source)...
Loading /usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/preview-latex.el (source)...
Loading /etc/emacs/site-start.d/50dictionaries-common.el (source)...
Loading debian-ispell...
Loading /var/cache/dictionaries-common/emacsen-ispell-default.el (source)...
Loading /var/cache/dictionaries-common/emacsen-ispell-dicts.el (source)...
Loading /etc/emacs/site-start.d/50emacs-goodies-el.el (source)...
Loading /etc/emacs/site-start.d/50maxima-emacs.el (source)...
Loading /etc/emacs/site-start.d/50python-docutils.el (source)...
Symbol's function definition is void: nil

real    0m0.067s
user    0m0.052s
sys 0m0.012s

while this is with ESS

l@p6k:/media/shared$ time emacs -batch -eval '(nil)'
Loading 00debian-vars...
Loading /etc/emacs/site-start.d/50auctex.el (source)...
Loading /usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/auctex.el (source)...
Loading /usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/preview-latex.el (source)...
Loading /etc/emacs/site-start.d/50dictionaries-common.el (source)...
Loading debian-ispell...
Loading /var/cache/dictionaries-common/emacsen-ispell-default.el (source)...
Loading /var/cache/dictionaries-common/emacsen-ispell-dicts.el (source)...
Loading /etc/emacs/site-start.d/50emacs-goodies-el.el (source)...
Loading /etc/emacs/site-start.d/50ess.el (source)...
Loading /etc/emacs/site-start.d/50maxima-emacs.el (source)...
Loading /etc/emacs/site-start.d/50python-docutils.el (source)...
Symbol's function definition is void: nil

real    2m8.148s
user    0m0.380s
sys 0m0.040s

I reproduced what above on my two home Debian Testing boxes (Emacs 24.5.1, ESS 16.04-2)

Any hint? I'm not a lisp programmer but available for further tests/infos

Thanks, best Luca

[vspinu]

2 minutes is way to much. It should take a fraction of a second. The problem lies most likely within the ess-site.el in the portion that searches for R versions here. Do you have a network drive or you set ess-directory-containing-R to a very big dir?

[eddelbuettel]

By default the Debian /Ubuntu machines will have R in /usr/bin/R -- which should be found immediately.

(And FWIW I have NFS mounts at work but still launch Emacs / ESS instaneously.)

[lbraglia]

I've a standard Debian install of both R and ESS; my /usr/bin/R is on a local hard disk

Below the .emacs chunk regarding ess

;; -----
;; ESS
;; -----
(require 'ess-site)
;; non stampa i comandi valutati a schermo e velocizza di *molto* emacs
(setq ess-eval-visibly-p nil)
;; non chiede la directory di start e la setta a .
(setq ess-ask-for-ess-directory nil)
;; fixa l'output restituito per mostrarne il piu possibile
(setq comint-scroll-to-bottom-on-input 'this)
;; non salvare l'history
(setq ess-history-file nil)
;; indentazione a 2 C++ like
(setq ess-default-style 'OWN)
(setq ess-indent-level 2)
(setq ess-continued-statement-offset 0)
(setq ess-brace-offset -2)
(setq ess-arg-function-offset 0)
(setq ess-expression-offset 2)
(setq ess-else-offset 0)
(setq ess-close-brace-offset 0)
;; parametri passati per l'invocazione del processo R
(setq inferior-R-args "--no-save --no-restore")
;; disabilita la sostituzione automatica di _ con <-
(ess-toggle-underscore nil)

[eddelbuettel]

As I suggested to Julian, how about if you remove everything else from .emacs, see how it behaves with just ESS and then add pieces back in one-by-one.

There must be a real bad (and reproducible) interaction somewhere, but so far only Julian and you see it.

I have the packaged ESS and R on a number of different machines and no issues.

[vspinu]

Yeh. I think this is the only way to find the culprit. Go to ess-site.el and comment in and out pieces there till you find which part causes the problem.

[lbraglia]

ok, i'll test in order

• commenting not-ess stuff in .emacs (and uncommenting single pieces back)
• adding/removing packages
• commenting ess-site.el

asap.. i'll let you know.

[juliangilbey]

I've located the culprit on my machine: it's tramp, which is required by ess-inf. Without ess installed:
time emacs -batch -q -eval '(nil)' takes 0.669 seconds real time, while time emacs -batch -q -eval "(require 'tramp)" takes 6.309 seconds. So I guess it's off to tramp to report a problem there...

[juliangilbey]

There's a fix for tramp, too; see Debian bug#810640. So this ess ticket can presumably be closed, as it's not an ess bug.

[lbraglia]

Confirmed...

this is with ESS

l@p6k:~$ cat /etc/resolv.conf
nameserver 8.8.8.8
l@p6k:~$ time emacs -batch -eval '(nil)'
Loading 00debian-vars...
Loading /etc/emacs/site-start.d/50auctex.el (source)...
Loading /usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/auctex.el (source)...
Loading /usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/preview-latex.el (source)...
Loading /etc/emacs/site-start.d/50dictionaries-common.el (source)...
Loading debian-ispell...
Loading /var/cache/dictionaries-common/emacsen-ispell-default.el (source)...
Loading /var/cache/dictionaries-common/emacsen-ispell-dicts.el (source)...
Loading /etc/emacs/site-start.d/50emacs-goodies-el.el (source)...
Loading /etc/emacs/site-start.d/50ess.el (source)...
Loading /etc/emacs/site-start.d/50maxima-emacs.el (source)...
Loading /etc/emacs/site-start.d/50python-docutils.el (source)...
Symbol's function definition is void: nil

real    0m0.582s
user    0m0.392s
sys 0m0.024s

This ticket can be closed for me too.

Thanks @juliangilbey

best, Luca

[davidcsterratt]

There is a patch for Ubuntu Xenial (16.04) too: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/emacs24/+bug/1594166