Julia seems to be very slow-CodePudding

I am running code shown in this question. I expected it to run faster second and third time (on first run it takes time to compile the code). However, it seems to be taking same amount of time as the first time. How can I make this code run faster?

Edit: I am running the code by giving command on Linux terminal: julia mycode.jl

I tried following instructions in the answer by @Przemyslaw Szufel but got following error:

julia> create_sysimage(["Plots"], sysimage_path="sys_plots.so", precompile_execution_file="precompile_plots.jl")

ERROR: MethodError: no method matching create_sysimage(::Array{String,1}; sysimage_path="sys_plots.so", precompile_execution_file="precompile_plots.jl")
Closest candidates are:
  create_sysimage() at /home/cardio/.julia/packages/PackageCompiler/2yhCw/src/PackageCompiler.jl:462 got unsupported keyword arguments "sysimage_path", "precompile_execution_file"
  create_sysimage(::Union{Array{Symbol,1}, Symbol}; sysimage_path, project, precompile_execution_file, precompile_statements_file, incremental, filter_stdlibs, replace_default, base_sysimage, isapp, julia_init_c_file, version, compat_level, soname, cpu_target, script) at /home/cardio/.julia/packages/PackageCompiler/2yhCw/src/PackageCompiler.jl:462
Stacktrace:
 [1] top-level scope at REPL[25]:1

I am using Julia on Debian Stable Linux: Debian ⛬ julia/1.5.3 dfsg-3

CodePudding user response：

In Julia packages are compiled each time they are run withing a single Julia session. Hence starting a new Julia process means that each time Plots.jl get compiled. This is quite a big package so will take a significant time to compile.

In order to circumvent it, use the PackageCompiler and compile Plots.jl into a static system image that can be used later by Julia

The basic steps include:

using PackageCompiler
create_sysimage(["Plots"], sysimage_path="sys_plots.so", precompile_execution_file="precompile_plots.jl")

After this is done you will need to run your code as:

julia --sysimage sys_plots.so mycode.jl

Similarly you could have added MultivariateStats and RDatasets to the generated sysimage but I do not think they cause any significant delay.

Note that if the subsequent runs are part of your development process (rather than your production system implementation) and you are eg. developing a Julia module than you could rather consider using Revise.jl in the development process rather than precompile the sysimage. Basically, having the sysimage means that you will need to rebuild it each time you update your Julia packages so I would consider this approach rather for production than development (depends on your exact scenario).