Run plugins asynchronously (EditorConfig and other plugins slowing down Code)

What Happened?

Some plugins slow down Code a lot, to the point that Code is barely usable in weak CPUs.

Steps to Reproduce

In a weak CPU (like a Raspberry Pi or a Chromebook):

1. Get Code
2. Enable some plugins
3. See slowdown.

Expected Behavior

This does not happen in heavier text editors that do more stuff like VSCode because each extension runs in its own thread. Maybe we could get some ideas from them?

OS Version

7.x (Horus)

Software Version

Latest release (I have run all updates)

Log Output

No response

Hardware Info

Chromebook: Intel Celeron N4020 4GB RAM 32GB eMMC.

[jeremypw]

Would be possible to identify a plugin that slows Code down particularly badly or is it a combination of plugins?

I don't think a particular plugin is the problem. There are always memory leaks. However one slow tab on Chrome doesn't slow it down or crash it, same with VSCode. So my opinion is the problem is plugins run synchronously with the code editor.

Even when all plugins are disabled, Code runs worse than Gedit and other editors, and is marked as "consuming lots of energy" by elementary. Don't know why.

[jeremypw]

The Git integration (which is in the main code) probably uses significant power for a large repository.

[jeremypw]

You could try turning off "Autosave" to stop documents continually being saved while being edited.

I'll try that. However git integration in vscode is more complete and works fine without using much power.

Disabling the situation makes the text editor run much smoother. However in my opinion Code should remain simple in its core and extend itself with plugins (so no Git integration in the core for example)

[jeremypw]

What do you mean by "disabling the situation"? Do you mean turning "Autosave" off?

Are you working on a git repository? The git integration should not consume power if you are not. We can look for inefficiencies in the git integration. Code is targeted at editing code in git repositories so that does need to be efficient. Improving git integration completeness is one of our aims.

[jeremypw]

We could look at options to disable some aspects of git integration like real time updating the git status of each line in the document which slower machines might struggle with.

Closing tabs is also slow (takes something like half a second or 1 second). It shouldn't be this way, even when plugins are enabled.

[jeremypw]

@aitor-gomila How many tabs are we talking about? Or is it half a second per tab? How large a document? I find closing a single tab containing <2000 lines in the master version virtually instantaneous with an SSD. A certain amount of checking goes on before the tab closes.

Maybe more like 1-2 seconds per tab. Documents aren't longer than 200 lines. It's a chromebook with an eMMC. I know an SSD is recommended but the OS in general works fine, blazingly fast. It's just the Code app.

[jeremypw]

Usage of cpu on my computer is virtually undetectable when just closing one tab (<0.2% for a fraction of a second) this is with all plugins on, symbol pane showing and using a git repo (Code itself) but it might be worth you running Gnome System Monitor while you close tabs to see what is rate limiting.

Opening and closing a file with 20 LOC will ramp up CPU power usage to 100% and go down once the UI is not freezed anymore

Changing settings and everything else will affect CPU usage too, other than idling.

Disabling all plugins and settings and restarting seems to have fixed this, though as I say, a badly written plugin shouldn't affect the IDE itself and its core features.

P.S: I disabled "editorconfig" plugin. Looking at its source code, it reads from editorconfig on "hook document", which is I suppose, open document? For some reason, this is freezing the UI, it should be async.

In a desktop CPU it's not as noticeable, however you'll notice if you disable all plugins closing tabs will feel noticeably snappier (Ryzen 7 2700)

[jeremypw]

@aitor-gomila Thanks for the investigation! So it looks like the editorconfig plugin is mainly responsible? I'll look at the code to see if there is an obvious inefficiency or whether it can be made async.