Adding a using ProfileView statement slows down my application by a factor of >20x

[jonathan-laurent]

I am observing a strange phenomenon where the only fact of adding a using ProfileView statement (without using any function from this package) slows down my application by a huge factor (>20x).

For example, the following code snippet should work fine in an REPL:

]add AlphaZero@0.5
using AlphaZero
Scripts.train("tictactoe")

Here, the initial benchmark (AlphaZero against MCTS) should terminate in under a minute (in fact, the progress bar does not even show up).
However, if one runs the following:

]add AlphaZero@0.5
using AlphaZero
using ProfileView
Scripts.train("tictactoe")

the initial benchmark still hasn't terminated after 15 minutes. Note that the order in which AlphaZero and ProfileView are included does not matter here. Note that the example above does not rely on a GPU. Also, the following warnings are printed after running the using ProfileView statement.

Gtk-Message: 21:00:48.862: Failed to load module "canberra-gtk-module"
Gtk-Message: 21:00:48.862: Failed to load module "canberra-gtk-module"

Any idea why this is happening?

Configuration

• Ubuntu 20.04
• Julia 1.6.1
• ProfileView v0.6.9
• AlphaZero v0.5.0

[timholy]

Is your application threaded? JuliaLang/julia#35552

[jonathan-laurent]

It is threaded indeed and the issue you mentioned seems relevant. I'll try again on more recent Julia releases.

[IanButterworth]

This is now fixed on recent releases when no windows are open, but having a ProfileView window open will still slow down threaded code. (moving a mouse over the window will get a lot of speed back, as it wakes up the process that's blocking)

Given this issue is about using ProfileView only, I think it can be closed.