Thank you TextMate for rendering my computer unusable for 5 minutes, taking every last byte of RAM available and swapping every other process out while you apparently loaded every file in my project into memory at once (including multi-hundred-MB log files) and then leisurely (but disk- and CPU-intensively) sifted through it after I had the temerity to actually use your “search in project” function.
Next time I’ll remember to use git grep. Oh, and now I love how TM is still using 708M of memory (RSIZE) even after I’ve closed everything.
Isn’t TM about due for an update? How about better memory management and a way to exclude folders from search for starters?
Tags: macromemoryusage, textmate
July 3rd, 2008 at 9:34 am
Hostile Monkey loves TextMate, but for searching large files he use TextWrangler.
Please, Alan - Hostile Monkey likes a usable computer for development: can haz v2.0 soon?
July 3rd, 2008 at 7:34 pm
I’ve complained about TM’s memory usage in the past. When I first noticed the ballooning caused by project-wide search I did a Google search for the issue and eventually wound up at a report in the TM bug tracker in which Odgaard said that TM worked that way by design (loading the contents of every file in the project into memory and leaving it there until quit), wasn’t a bug, and wouldn’t be fixed. I certainly hope he changes his mind about that decision for TM 2.0, because I consider project-wide search to be basic functionality in any serious text editor; as things currently stand TM doesn’t have usable project-wide search and so you might as well say it doesn’t have project-wide search at all. Period.
Funny you should mention “git grep”. Soon after switching to Git I stopped using the TM search and started using “git grep” exclusively for project-wide searches. But if TM 2.0 isn’t broken in this respect I’ll definitely switch back to it. (When, oh when, is 2.0 going to come out? It was stated that it would be Leopard-only, but unless he hurries up Leopard will already be superseded by the time 2.0 comes out.)
July 3rd, 2008 at 7:50 pm
Wincent:
Ha! I got “git grep” from you, and also started using it instead of find in project in TM - I can’t remember where I saw you doing it, maybe something on your blog or KB? I’d also like to go back, it’s much more convenient to search in-editor and be able to click on the result to go straight to the code location. The developer’s explanation is BS, of course. And at the very least you should be able to exclude folders - I do not need or want to search my logs and vendor/rails etc.
I hadn’t done a full project search for a long time and in the instance that inspired my post I’d basically done it unthinkingly, by accident. When I managed to open Activity Monitor to find out what the hell was going on, TM was taking over 1.5GB. My entire project including logs is less than 300M. So not only is TM loading the entire thing into RAM, it’s doing it in an incredibly inefficient manner!
A fix can’t come soon enough, and if 2.0 doesn’t include one then I won’t be paying.
Monkey:
Switching to another editor to perform searches is obviously not an acceptable solution. Git grep is a better and lighter weight workaround. I shouldn’t have to buy another text editor to search!
July 3rd, 2008 at 10:50 pm
Paying for 2.0? Odgaard has always said that it would be a free upgrade to existing customers. I wonder if that was a mistake on his part; perhaps if it weren’t a free upgrade he’d be more motivated to complete it.
July 4th, 2008 at 7:18 am
Ah, right you are - I’d forgotten. And I agree with your hypothesis - perhaps that is the real reason for its failure to appear.
If that is indeed the case, I wish he’d just announce he’d changed his mind and upgrades would cost money after all. He’d get some complaints but I’d be happy - I’d rather pay a reasonable amount for a useful, productivity-enhancing upgrade than pay nothing and get nothing too.
I probably would pay $20 or more right now just for a good, fast, usable search implementation. Maybe he could release a paid “search plugin” if that’s what it takes to get him moving : )
July 9th, 2008 at 7:46 pm
Woah thanks to the 2 of you (Sho and Wincent) for bringing “git grep” to my attention. I too have been feeling the pain with Find in Project in TextMate. Especially when I’m running low on hard disk space and TextMate starts using up all of it until I have 0 disk space left (screwing up a lot of apps).