Systematic increase since Julia1.10 in compile time and TTFP for the GMT package

[joa-quim]

V1.10.9

Precompiling GMT finished.
  1 dependency successfully precompiled in 58 seconds. 86 already precompiled.
 63.133390 seconds (5.88 M allocations: 426.263 MiB, 0.17% gc time, 2.39% compilation time)

julia> @time @eval plot(rand(5,2))
  2.709345 seconds (8.24 M allocations: 555.182 MiB, 4.92% gc time, 99.89% compilation time: 22% of which was recompilation)

V1.11.5

Precompiling GMT...
  1 dependency successfully precompiled in 72 seconds. 110 already precompiled.
 73.653952 seconds (2.15 M allocations: 144.239 MiB, 0.09% gc time, 0.13% compilation time: 5% of which was recompilation)

julia> @time @eval plot(rand(5,2))
  6.551168 seconds (32.26 M allocations: 1.602 GiB, 6.25% gc time, 99.95% compilation time: 15% of which was recompilation)

V1.12-beta1

  1 dependency successfully precompiled in 83 seconds. 111 already precompiled.
 84.933721 seconds (3.59 M allocations: 203.204 MiB, 0.07% gc time, 0.34% compilation time)

julia> @time @eval plot(rand(5,2))
 10.917758 seconds (41.63 M allocations: 2.056 GiB, 3.67% gc time, 99.97% compilation time: 13% of which was recompilation)

nightly

  1 dependency successfully precompiled in 79 seconds. 110 already precompiled.
 80.827823 seconds (3.51 M allocations: 199.250 MiB, 0.07% gc time, 0.18% compilation time)

julia> @time @eval plot(rand(5,2))
 11.312476 seconds (41.97 M allocations: 2.053 GiB, 3.57% gc time, 99.97% compilation time: 13% of which was recompilation)

[StefanKarpinski]

Thanks for the repot. The compiler guys have been tracking this—not for GMT specifically, but for many other compilation-heavy packages. It's definitely a bummer and something they're trying to improve.

[joa-quim]

Unfortunately 1.12 is around the corner and these severe regressions improved only a little.

Update

  | | |_| | | | (_| |  |  Version 1.12.0-beta4 (2025-06-05)
 _/ |\__'_|_|_|\__'_|  |  Official https://julialang.org release
|__/                   |

julia> cd("c:/v"); @time using GMT
Precompiling GMT finished.
  1 dependency successfully precompiled in 66 seconds. 108 already precompiled.
 67.624928 seconds (2.54 M allocations: 153.060 MiB, 0.06% gc time, 0.12% compilation time: 51% of which was recompilation)

julia> @time @eval plot(rand(5,2))
  7.184639 seconds (30.43 M allocations: 1.513 GiB, 3.68% gc time, 99.96% compilation time: 99% of which was recompilation)

  | | |_| | | | (_| |  |  Version 1.13.0-DEV.771 (2025-06-21)
 _/ |\__'_|_|_|\__'_|  |  Commit d887bd21ab (9 days old master)
|__/                   |

julia> cd("c:/v"); @time using GMT
Precompiling GMT finished.
  1 dependency successfully precompiled in 71 seconds. 111 already precompiled.
 71.836444 seconds (2.69 M allocations: 155.998 MiB, 0.10% gc time, 0.05% compilation time)

julia> @time @eval plot(rand(5,2))
  6.468091 seconds (25.90 M allocations: 1.298 GiB, 4.65% gc time, 99.95% compilation time: 13% of which was recompilation)