Will be the first release with improved startup times

Apr 19, 2017 22:40 GMT  ·  By

Last week when GitHub launched Atom 1.16 as the latest stable release of the open-source and multi-platform hackable text editor loved by lots of developers around the world, they also announced the Beta release of Atom 1.17.

While Atom 1.16 proved to be a minor maintenance update that only implemented a couple of new title bar options for macOS users, Atom 1.17 promises to be the first release in a long time to give a boost to the startup time of the application, on all supported platforms, including GNU/Linux, macOS, and Microsoft Windows.

The startup time of any application is a very important thing when deciding to stick with an app to develop your projects, and it appears that Atom needs such improvements. In a lengthy article, Antonio Scandurra from the Atom team talks about why reducing startup time is a non-trivial task and gives users an insight to the optimizations implemented so far.

"For a long time, we’ve been wanting to have more control over Atom’s startup code. In November of last year, as part of this effort, we created an in-depth issue that carefully described where time was spent when opening an Atom window," reveals GitHub's Antonio Scandurra. "Overall, on a stock installation, we made loading Atom almost 50% faster."

Using V8 snapshots, improving require time

Making use of V8 snapshots, removing jQuery and custom elements, as well as using the electron-link node module in Atom laid the groundwork for reducing startup time in Atom, but the team also needed to improve the "require" time, optimize style sheet loading, make the "atom" global code twice as fast, as well as preload bundled packages.

If you're interested in the details regarding Atom's first round of performance improvements to startup time, we recommend reading the entire article published by Antonio Scandurra. But you can test it yourself right now if you download the Atom 1.17 Beta for GNU/Linux, macOS, or Microsoft Windows operating systems from our website.

Atom 1.17 improves startup time
Atom 1.17 improves startup time

Atom 1.17 (2 Images)

Atom 1.17 Beta available for download
Atom 1.17 improves startup time
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