zsh-bench

The problem with this article is that the benchmark method they use is flawed. The documentation of zshbench explains why: https://github.com/romkatv/zsh-bench Even with a low grade laptop, my zsh config grants me a sub 5ms prompt and a sub 1ms input lag, and that's far more important than the exit time. ./zsh-bench ==> benchmarking login shell of user XYZ ... creates_tty=0 has_compsys=1 has_syntax_highlighting=0 has_autosuggestions=0 has_git_prompt=1 first_prompt_lag_ms=54.942 first_command_lag_ms=57.069 command_lag_ms=4.275 input_lag_ms=0.669 exit_time_ms=26.522 hyperfine --warmup 3 'zsh -i -c exit' Benchmark 1: zsh -i -c exit Time (mean ± σ): 26.5 ms ± 0.5 ms Range (min … max): 25.5 ms … 27.6 ms

Until reading this thread I never knew so many in the industry were against performant software and workflows, but I suppose that explains the state of things. Oh My Zsh is more sluggish than benching zsh -ic 'exit 0' would suggest. This benchmark will show command lag among other things, which is very noticeable on a slower computer. https://github.com/romkatv/zsh-bench I use https://github.com/romkatv/zsh4humans. I installed it once, took an hour or two to tweak it to my liking, and haven't touched it since. It's in maintenance mode so I'm not worried about my zshrc breaking randomly. I have transient git prompt, autosuggestions, autocomplete, syntax highlighting, vim mode, a whole bunch of added functions and line editor additions, and my terminal opens in one frame. It feels more like an extension of my mind than a tool I'm interactin

FWIW, that’s not a great way to benchmark zsh. Check out zsh-bench⁽¹⁾ for a more authoritative approach, including first prompt lag, first command lag, input lag and exit lag. ⁽¹⁾ https://github.com/romkatv/zsh-bench

I think `zsh -l` start a login shell, which does not load zshrc so oh-my-zsh don't get initialized. Try `zsh -ic exit` and it should load zshrc before executing exit. That said, the time of `zsh -ic exit` isn't really meaningful metric for measuring the performance of an interactive shell. See https://github.com/romkatv/zsh-bench#how-not-to-benchmark for details.

That benchmark command isn’t great: https://github.com/romkatv/zsh-bench#how-not-to-benchmark

Someone's made a benchmarking system for zsh: https://github.com/romkatv/zsh-bench#premade-configs Of course, their config is the best according to the benchmark (and ohmyzsh is the slowest option), but DIY configs are also covered, particularly possible performance optimizations.

Recently, I moved off from oh-my-zsh after many users, to vanilla zsh with https://starship.rs, mainly due to the loading speed (used https://github.com/romkatv/zsh-bench to measure the speed). Still wanting to try out fish and hopefully soon!

Unfortunately, running exit is not a great strategy for running benchmarks. As an example, for zsh specifically, plugin managers are optimized for fast exit. romkatv did a great write-up and benchmark within the context of zsh[0]. It's a great read. [0] https://github.com/romkatv/zsh-bench#how-not-to-benchmark

Yeah, that blog post is doing exactly what https://github.com/romkatv/zsh-bench#how-not-to-benchmark says not to do...

In what ways is fish faster than zsh? I can be believe it’s faster than a poorly configured zsh (which unfortunately is quite common), but would be curious to see actual test results, with things like “input lag”, “time to first prompt”, “command lag”, etc. like is measured with the excellent zsh-bench (https://github.com/romkatv/zsh-bench#what-it-measures)