Re: [PATCH] Poison gettext with the Ook language

[Johannes Schindelin <Johannes.Schindelin@gmx.de>]

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Hi Ævar,

On Tue, 23 Oct 2018, Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason wrote:

> On Tue, Oct 23 2018, Johannes Schindelin wrote:
> 
> > On Mon, 22 Oct 2018, Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason wrote:
> >
> >> So I think the only reason to keep it [GETTEXT_POISON] compile-time is
> >> performance, but I don't think that matters. It's not like we're
> >> printing gigabytes of _() formatted output. Everything where formatting
> >> matters is plumbing which doesn't use this API. These messages are
> >> always for human consumption.
> >
> > Well, let's make sure that your impression is correct before going too
> > far. I, too, had the impression that gettext cannot possibly be expensive,
> > especifally in Git for Windows' settings, where we do not even ship
> > translations. Yet see the commit message of cc5e1bf99247 (gettext: avoid
> > initialization if the locale dir is not present, 2018-04-21):
> >
> > 	The runtime of a simple `git.exe version` call on Windows is
> > 	currently dominated by the gettext setup, adding a whopping ~150ms
> > 	to the ~210ms total.
> >
> > I would be in favor of your change to make this a runtime option, of
> > course, as long as it does not affect performance greatly (in particular
> > on Windows, where we fight an uphill battle to make Git faster).
> 
> How expensive gettext() may or may not be isn't relevant to the
> GETTEXT_POISON compile-time option.
> 
> The effect of what I'm suggesting here, and which my WIP patch in
> <875zxtd59e.fsf@evledraar.gmail.com> implements is that we'd do a
> one-time getenv() for each process that prints a _() message that we
> aren't doing now, and for each message call a function that would check
> a boolean "are we in poison mode" static global variable.

Yep, you are right, we are *already* going through _() as a function,
whether gettext() is initialized or not. My bad.

> Perhaps some of that's expensive on Windows, but given the recent
> patches by Microsoft employees to add GIT_TEST_* env options I assumed
> not, but in any case it won't have anything to do with how expensive
> gettext may or may not be, you'll already be paying that cost now (or
> not, with NO_GETTEXT).

Indeed, we want to measure performance better, and that's what those
environment variables are for.

Thanks,
Dscho