NOTICE

As of Neovim 0.9, this plugin is no longer required. Instead run:

vim.loader.enable()

impatient.nvim

Speed up loading Lua modules in Neovim to improve startup time.

Optimisations

This plugin does several things to speed loading Lua modules and files.

Implements a chunk cache

This is done by using loadstring to compile the Lua modules to bytecode and stores them in a cache file. The cache is invalidated using as hash consisting of:

• The modified time (sec and nsec) of the file path.
• The file size.

The cache file is located in $XDG_CACHE_HOME/nvim/luacache_chunks.

Implements a module resolution cache

This is done by maintaining a table of module name to path. The cache is invalidated only if a path no longer exists.

The cache file is located in $XDG_CACHE_HOME/nvim/luacache_modpaths.

Note: This optimization breaks the loading order guarantee of the paths in 'runtimepath'. If you rely on this ordering then you can disable this cache (_G.__luacache_config = { modpaths = { enable = false } }. See configuration below for more details.

Requirements

• Neovim v0.7

Installation

packer.nvim:

-- Is using a standard Neovim install, i.e. built from source or using a
-- provided appimage.
use 'lewis6991/impatient.nvim'

Setup

To use impatient, you need only to include it near the top of your init.lua or init.vim.

init.lua:

require('impatient')

init.vim:

lua require('impatient')

Commands

:LuaCacheClear:

Remove the loaded cache and delete the cache file. A new cache file will be created the next time you load Neovim.

:LuaCacheLog:

View log of impatient.

:LuaCacheProfile:

View profiling data. To enable, Impatient must be setup with:

lua require'impatient'.enable_profile()

Configuration

Unlike most plugins which provide a setup() function, Impatient uses a configuration table stored in the global state, _G.__luacache_config. If you modify the default configuration, it must be done before require('impatient') is run.

Default config:

_G.__luacache_config = {
  chunks = {
    enable = true,
    path = vim.fn.stdpath('cache')..'/luacache_chunks',
  },
  modpaths = {
    enable = true,
    path = vim.fn.stdpath('cache')..'/luacache_modpaths',
  }
}
require('impatient')

Performance Example

Measured on a M1 MacBook Air.

Total resolve: 54.337ms, total load: 34.257ms

Total resolve: 6.357ms, total load: 6.796ms

Relevant Neovim PR's

libs: vendor libmpack and libmpack-lua [merged]

fix(vim.mpack): rename pack/unpack => encode/decode [merged]

fix(runtime): add compressed representation to &rtp [merged]

fix(runtime): don't use regexes inside lua require'mod' [merged]

fix(lua): restore priority of the preloader [merged]

refactor(lua): call loadfile internally instead of luaL_loadfile [merged]

feat(lua): startup profiling

Credit

All credit goes to @bfredl who implemented the majority of this plugin in https://github.com/neovim/neovim/pull/15436.