vim start-up slow when trying to connect to X server

[CDitzel]

After a fresh install of ubuntu 18.04 I notice that opening vim or gvim takes up to 2 seconds while being in awesome wm. If I log in to the gnome desktop instead, the behaviour is back to normal and vim starts up fast. I did not change anything in my awesome config.

Running gvim -X in the shell also works and is fast. Only if I omit the -X it is slow

What could be the problem? thank you in advance

[psychon]

Do I understand this correctly:

• Open a terminal (opens immediately)
• Run vim in the terminal (hangs for 2 seconds and then vim shows up)

And similarly:

• Open a terminal (opens immediately)
• Run gvim in the terminal (window only shows up after two seconds)

[blueyed]

Try if using -X helps:

-X Do not connect to X server

[psychon]

@blueyed

Running gvim -X in the shell also works and is fast. Only if I omit the -X it is slow

[blueyed]

Reminded me of https://github.com/awesomeWM/awesome/issues/2717 then.

[psychon]

What could be the problem?

I don't know, but you could run vim/gvim under strace with option -f -tt or x11trace/xtrace with option --relative-timestamps in the hope of figuring out what the slow part is. Also, gdb might help in figuring out what vim is waiting for. However, I guess none of these options are trivial to use.

[blueyed]

I am pretty sure that it is Vim not being able to connect, and stopping after 2s then (https://github.com/vim/vim/blob/63dbfd33c1d47400c62775842b5b750ee69e2383/src/os_unix.c#L1817).

[CDitzel]

thank you guys for your input. How can I fix that?

[psychon]

Well... do you have strace? If so, can you run things under strace -tt -o /tmp/trace.txt and provide the resulting trace? Perhaps that tells us where exactly this hang... hangs. Besides that, all of the ideas above still stand.