Performance issues

[agzam]

I started using the package, and recently I realized - for some reason, just moving the cursor around got noticeably slower. Profiler showed some which-key related functions to blame, i.e.:

which-key--hide-popup - why would it try to hide the popup when it was never opened, I'm just moving cursor around? upd: it seems that function runs regardless of which-key-posframe - either it's enabled or not.

. For a while I thought there's something in my which-key settings causing that. Then after spending some more time, I found the culprit - it's which-key-posframe.

However, it is not as straightforward as saying "the package has issues". Interestingly, this is what's happening:

I have which-key and which-key-posframe enabled with the settings such these:

(setq
   which-key-show-early-on-C-h t
   which-key-idle-delay 1.0
   which-key-idle-secondary-delay 0.05)

(setq which-key-posframe-poshandler 'posframe-poshandler-window-bottom-right-corner
  which-key-min-display-lines 15)

When I open something (e.g., a big .org file), moving the cursor around initially is slow; I'd disable which-key-posframe and, voila - it gets fast again. I would re-enable the mode - and it is still fast, it won't go back to lagging as when I open the file. So, it is slow only when the first time I open the file.

I'm not exactly sure what's causing it. It could be Emacs 28 with native comp, or a Mac-specific problem.

I'll leave this here just in case someone experienced similar problems or suggests a work around.

[yanghaoxie]

which-key--hide-popup - why would it try to hide the popup when it was never opened, I'm just moving cursor around?

1. I think this is because the fowlling code in which-key:

   (add-hook 'pre-command-hook #'which-key--hide-popup)

2. Maybe you can use profiler to see which functions cause the lag, and please post the profiler report here in order to let us investigate the possible issues.

[eeshugerman]

I'm seeing this too. It's strange because I've used this package for a long time now, and only in the past few weeks has this become an issue for me. A few notes:

I don't see this issue on my Mac, which is running v28/master, from this project.

On GNU/Linux I'm using the v28/master + pgtk fork from the AUR. I think pgtk might be part of the problem. @agzam, are you using pgtk perchance? I'm not sure if it's a thing on Mac.

---

When I open something (e.g., a big .org file), moving the cursor around initially is slow; I'd disable which-key-posframe and, voila - it gets fast again. I would re-enable the mode - and it is still fast, it won't go back to lagging as when I open the file. So, it is slow only when the first time I open the file.

I observe this too, but it usually becomes slow again once I do something to actually activate which-key-posframe (eg <C-x>, pause...).

---

I can reproduce this with a very minimal setup: emacs -Q and then:

(require 'which-key)
(require 'which-key-posframe)

(which-key-mode 1)
(which-key-posframe-mode 1)

...so I think we can rule out interactions with other packages.

---

Maybe you can use profiler to see which functions cause the lag, and please post the profiler report here in order to let us investigate the possible issues.

Here's mine:

         626  46% - which-key--hide-popup
         621  45%  - which-key--hide-popup-ignore-command
         621  45%   - which-key-posframe--hide
         604  44%      posframe-hide
         264  19% + timer-event-handler
         173  12% + command-execute
         122   9% + eldoc-pre-command-refresh-echo-area
         113   8% + redisplay_internal (C function)
          19   1% + sp--save-pre-command-state
          12   0% + winner-save-old-configurations
           8   0% + evil--jump-hook
           5   0% + evil-repeat-pre-hook
           4   0% + global-hl-line-highlight
           3   0%   sp--post-command-hook-handler
           3   0% + highlight-parentheses--initiate-highlight
           3   0% + evil-escape-pre-command-hook
           0   0% + ...