Emacs: The macOS Bug
9 months ago
- #MacOS
- #Performance
- #Emacs
- Emacs on MacOS experiences increasing RAM usage and slowdowns over time, eventually freezing.
- Debugging revealed the issue stems from repeated invocations of [NSApp run], causing rapid memory allocations and deallocations.
- MacOS caches these allocations, leading to memory bloat, especially on faster hardware and HiDPI displays.
- The problem is deeply rooted in Emacs' MacOS-specific code, making it difficult to fix without significant architectural changes.
- Potential solutions include rewriting parts of the code in Swift for better memory management and threading support.
- Current discussions on emacs-devel aim to address these issues, but a complete fix would require extensive work.