It came to my attention when we added Nim to our company that our CI speed got way, way slower, and I started wondering why. And so I ran a little investigation. So it looks like it takes about 1:51 seconds to install the Nimble packages for Fidget2.
All right, I thought to myself, well, that's a little slow. Let's see if I can replicate what Nimble does with just git commands. So that's what I did. I just git cloned every package and stuck them into nim.cfg, and everything built. And it was way faster! It was only 20 seconds. So what is Nimble doing for that 1:31 seconds extra? Very strange. SAT solving can't take that much. Even like walking the package tree can't take that long.
Then I thought, well, git is actually kind of slow, because you have to do the handshake and do the git:// protocol. What if you just curl & unzip the packages directly? And then I did that, and that was even faster. 16 seconds!
It's like, wow, okay, now we're going. Well, what about if we do it in parallel? In parallel, it's like 3 seconds. Okay, so if you just download zips in parallel, it's 3 seconds. But if you use Nimble, it's 1:51 seconds. Is this true? Am I doing something wrong?
Code here: https://github.com/treeform/fidget2/pull/91/files
* Nimble ..................... 1:51s https://github.com/treeform/fidget2/actions/runs/18803878890/job/53655066175
* Git clone .................... 20s https://github.com/treeform/fidget2/actions/runs/18803878889/job/53655066135
* Curl Zips .................... 16s https://github.com/treeform/fidget2/actions/runs/18803878895/job/53655066174
* Curl Zips in Parallel ......... 3s https://github.com/treeform/fidget2/actions/runs/18803878916/job/53655066170
It came to my attention when we added Nim to our company that our CI speed got way, way slower, and I started wondering why. And so I ran a little investigation. So it looks like it takes about 1:51 seconds to install the Nimble packages for Fidget2.
All right, I thought to myself, well, that's a little slow. Let's see if I can replicate what Nimble does with just git commands. So that's what I did. I just git cloned every package and stuck them into nim.cfg, and everything built. And it was way faster! It was only 20 seconds. So what is Nimble doing for that 1:31 seconds extra? Very strange. SAT solving can't take that much. Even like walking the package tree can't take that long.
Then I thought, well, git is actually kind of slow, because you have to do the handshake and do the git:// protocol. What if you just curl & unzip the packages directly? And then I did that, and that was even faster. 16 seconds!
It's like, wow, okay, now we're going. Well, what about if we do it in parallel? In parallel, it's like 3 seconds. Okay, so if you just download zips in parallel, it's 3 seconds. But if you use Nimble, it's 1:51 seconds. Is this true? Am I doing something wrong?
Code here: https://github.com/treeform/fidget2/pull/91/files