Using V25 on MAC is very slow

[rajkej]

I have been really trying to use SE 25.0.0.9 on MAC for a while. I posted earlier about some issues with the auto complete. In trying to understand what is going on I went ahead and created a new configuration and loaded my project. Now I can't even type with most of the default SE settings. I type one character and SE goes to sleep for seconds and ignores all my other typing. After about 4-5 seconds then I can type another character.

So I turned on profiling and typed "F" and got the following profiling results (see attached, I couldn't cut the text and paste it).

To create this I completely deleted my setup directory ~Library/Application Support/SlickEdit/25.0.0 and started SE. Then I went through the quick setup and then did a few other changes to key settings that I use (key bindings, font, colors). I did disable background tagging as my projects have only a hundred or two files each so tag quickly.

There has to be something different in my setup to cause this type of thing. It makes V25 unusable to me. If you have any suggestions, I'll take a look.

I did notice the "get_all_specific_JDK_paths_mac" taking a long time in that report. I have no java in my project.

[Dennis]

Try loading this experimental hot fix.  These changes will be in the first hot fix for 25.0.0.9.

[rajkej]

That was a definite improvement. Thank you!

[nunya]

I'm using v25.0.1.0. I've been a user for a very long time. The performance on Mac has always been abysmal, but this is the worst so far.

It's faster if I close all projects, but it's still excruciatingly slow.

I have all the symptoms of the OP, but even worse. Scrolling (line up, down) is really slow. Typing is really slow. At this point vi is better.

[Dennis]

The longest running call in your profiling results took 1/8th second.

What language are you using primarily?  How large are your projects?  What are you doing when you notice performance hits?  Are you running on a native desktop or a remote display?

[nunya]

> What language are you using primarily?
C/C++
some objective-c in other projects.

> How large are your projects?
The size doesn't seem to matter. But, in this project ~5500 files

> What are you doing when you notice performance hits?
Anything. Moving the cursor up/down/left/right using the arrow keys. Trying to type/edit/change code. In this particular capture, I just hit arrow up and caught a second or two.

> Are you running on a native desktop or a remote display?
Native desktop. Latest macOS Big Sur. Mac Pro 2013 32GB.

TBH, it's been an issue in the past as well. I've filed support tickets in the past, but never got a good resolution. It's just gotten worse.

[Dennis]

Could you do a longer performance (Slick-C Profiling) capture so we could get more useful results?

If that does not yield good results, I might have you also sample the process from the Activity Monitor to see what's going on a the compiled code level.

[nunya]

Here you go.

I noticed the profiling only captures things with macros. What about the AppKit side of things?

[Dennis]

I'm not sure if you're collecting the profiling results correctly. 
Again, in your submission, the total time spent for the longest running
Slick-C macro was less that 1/5 second, and the auto-save timer was only
ran 14 times, so that's a duration of at most 4 seconds.

Do the following:

  1) Macro > Slick-C Profiling > Begin Profiling
  2) Work in the editor for five minutes or more,
      do things like scrolling and moving around and typing
      that have triggered the observed performance hits for you
  3) Macro > Slick-C Profiling > Finish Profiling...
  4) Capture a fresh screen shot
  5) OR, Macro > Slick-C Profiling > Save...
      and submit the profile.tsv created.

That does just capture time spent in the Slick-C interpreter.

To capture profiling data about the application in general,
do the following:

  1) Open a Terminal window
  2) Use the command "sample SlickEditPro2020 30 >vs30.txt"
       to take a thirty second sample of SlickEdit
  3) make sure you do something that triggers the performance hit in those 30 seconds.
  3) zip up vs30.txt and post it here.

You can also sample the process using Activity Monitor, but the default sample time is only 10 seconds, so it might be hard to reproduce anything in that time.

[nunya]

The slick profiling is correct. That was about 30 seconds of up/down cursor movement. Auto-Save was disabled, so I don't know why that's even running. I turned off half the features, since the user interaction is so poor.

Here's a time sampling log, with some usage.

[Dennis]

That helps some.  Looks like the majority of time was spent in drawing.
I need a little bit more information:

1) Could you post your Help > About info for SlickEdit
2) Also your user.cfg.xml from your SlickEdit configuration directory.
3) Finally, you could experiment with tweaking the Mac specific settings in
    Tools > Options > Appearance > Advanced.

     a) In particular, try all three settings for Retina support
     b) I do not know if you have a Retina display or if you are using scaling
         but there are cases where Auto-Detect gets it wrong.
     c) Note that those settings require fully closing and restarting SlickEdit.

[nunya]

I'm not using a Retina display with the editor. I can run notepad, vi, etc. next to SlickEdit and it's much more responsive, and faster to type.

attached as requested.

[Dennis]

Did you try changing any of the Mac options under Tools > Options > Appearance > Advanced?  I see that you have the fast scrolling option turned off and Retina mode in Auto-Detect.

[nunya]

Yes, I tried changing the Retina mode. It had no effect.

[Dennis]

And did you try turning on the fast scrolling option?