Re: development software

[Jeff Licquia <jeff@luci.org>]

On Thu, Jan 20, 2000 at 12:38:42PM -0600, Cloudmaster wrote:
> 
> Jeff Licquia wrote:
> > 
> > Emacs does C/C++, has a function finder thingie (etags), and is
> > integrated with CVS.  And it definitely doesn't assume you're doing
> > all GUI debugging. :-)
> > 
> > It's also integrated with gdb, FWIW, although I prefer DDD.
> 
> and it can read to me, surf the web, and eat all my my RAM.

Munch, munch, munch...

Seriously, though, while Emacs has this nasty reputation for being
such a hog, it isn't too bad.  Consider some processes I've got
running as I type this message:

USER       PID %CPU %MEM   VSZ  RSS TTY      STAT START   TIME COMMAND
jeff     18757  0.0  2.7  5852 3540 ?        S    22:29   0:00 gnome-terminal
www-data   500  0.0  0.4  7044  628 ?        S    Jan16   0:08 /usr/bin/python /usr/sbin/zope-z2
root     21376  0.0  5.3 57960 6792 ?        S    13:00   0:10 /usr/bin/X11/X vt8 -auth /var/lib/gdm/:1.Xauth :1
jeff     18721  0.1  2.6  6144 3456 ?        S    22:25   0:00 gnomepager_applet --activate-goad-server gnomepager_applet

jeff     18737  0.3  4.5  8076 5800 ?        S    22:26   0:01 /usr/bin/xemacs-20.4-nomule
jeff     18738  0.0  0.8  2948 1072 ttyp1    S    22:26   0:00 /usr/lib/xemacs-20.4/i386-debian-linux//gnuserv
jeff     18777  0.0  0.6  2912  888 pts/0    S    22:29   0:00 gnuclient /tmp/mutt-server1-18763-1

The last three processes (after the blank line) constitute XEmacs; I'm 
running it in client-server mode, with two windows open (this message
being one of them).  Look at the VSZ and RSS columns of all these
apps.  (In fairness, X isn't really the biggest hog; it just has my
video memory mapped into its own address space, which doesn't use any
system RAM.)

Now, I'm not holding Emacs up as a paragon of virtue and conservative
memory management by any stretch, but when you consider how much
memory the major Linux desktops suck, it's not too bad by comparison,
especially when you consider all you can do with it.

I think Emacs suffered from bloat early on, and earned its reputation
back in the days when 8 MB was a lot.  Since then, however, it hasn't
grown too much; most new features these days are implemented in terms
of scripts that swap in and out as they are needed.

> I've been trying to avoid emacs for as long as possible...  Does X-emacs
> do that stuff too?  At least it looks like it deserves the bloat. :)

XEmacs is essentially Emacs with a few pretty add-ons.  The
differences between XEmacs and Emacs, feature-wise, are about as
significant as the differences between versions of Emacs.  In Debian,
most Emacs add-ons install themselves into all the (X)Emacs variants
you have installed, and can be used equally well from any of them.

I prefer the XEmacs GUI, but since XEmacs isn't readily available for
Windows (AFAIK), I use GNU Emacs on my Windows box.  I can actually
copy my .emacs preference file directly from Linux to Windows and use
it without change.

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