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Showing posts with the label PrecompileTools

Optimizing Julia Time-to-First-Plot: Using PrecompileTools and Package Extensions

  The "Time-to-First-Plot" (TTFP) problem is the most notorious friction point in the Julia ecosystem. You start a REPL, load your heavy plotting library, execute a function, and wait. You wait for type inference, LLVM IR generation, and native code compilation. In CI/CD pipelines, this latency adds expensive minutes to every commit check. In interactive exploration, it breaks the flow state. While Julia 1.9 and 1.10 introduced massive improvements to local caching and reduced invalidation, shipping a package that feels "snappy" usually requires manual intervention. This post details the modern architectural pattern for solving TTFP: decoupling heavy dependencies using  Package Extensions  (introduced in Julia 1.9) and baking compilation traces into the package image using  PrecompileTools.jl . The Root Cause: JIT vs. AOT Julia is Just-In-Time (JIT) compiled, but effectively behaves like an Ahead-Of-Time (AOT) compiler that runs lazily. Type Inference:  When you...