[TxMt] Switching to TextMate is slow

[Steve Lianoglou]

Hi Colm,

> I'm running build 1215 on a MacBook and whenever I switch application
> into TextMate it takes a few seconds before the application becomes
> active.  For those few seconds the application is just frozen
> (although it buffers keypresses and executes them when it becomes
> active).
>
> This is very annoying :)  Anyone able to help?

This comes up fairly often on this list and the usual culprits are:

1) You are most likely working in "project mode", for lack of a  
better word. Which is to say that you've either dragged a folder onto  
TextMate, or using an actual TextMate project file. The litmus test  
on wether or not you are in "project mode" (that's not an official  
"mode" btw) is wether or not you can open/view a drawer w/ your  
documents in it; and

2) You are most likely working on files over some type of network  
share (AFP or Samba, perhaps).

It's a known issue and I believe Allan is working on a fix (there is  
no ETA on that, however). The freeze you're seeing happens because  
TextMate rescans all of the documents when it gains focus to see if  
another app has changed any of them. This way you won't trampling  
over a change that you might have done elsewhere.

One thing you can do is make sure to work on local files everytime  
you're dealing with large projects (svn/cvs is your friend). The  
delay that results from rescanning all of the files in the project  
will most likely not be all that noticeable when you do.

-steve