[luatex] LuaTeX precompilation

[Axel Kittenberger]

On Wed, Dec 20, 2023 at 2:31 PM Hans Hagen <j.hagen at xs4all.nl> wrote:

> in practice one can neglect the performance drop because computers
> likely have become (more than) 3 times faster since 2005, when luatex
> showed up, and at that time pdftex performance was considered okay


Sorry, but I have to disagree here, for me the performance differences were
indeed a dealbreaker for me to push lualatex as a general
purpose replacement in my department. (remember the discussion with one
patch https://tug.org/pipermail/luatex/2023-June/007824.html but with my
general impetus to improve runtime performance I was eventually told to
stop when profiling into the Lua part proofed hard).

Why it may be true, that lualatex may run now in less time on the same
document than pdflatex ran 20 years ago, it's still a tall ask for someone
to switch from a compiler that uses 150s for a complicated document to one
that uses 210s, in this case just for compatibility/simplicity reasons,
having to wait a minute longer? Sorry deal breaker. That's why I stuck to
pdflatex as default and use lualatex only when one of its more advanced
features is absolutely necessary, and to my impression this seems to be a
widespread notion.

So in this sense, yes you are right, when you need one of lualatex advanced
features it's to be considered okay, as in pdflatex was okay 20 years ago,
if you do not specifically need it though, then no, stick with pdflatex.

Kind regards, Axel
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