[Pytest-commit] Issue #293: tox startup is very slow due to setup.py and .tox virtualenvs (hpk42/tox)

[Luke Plant]

New issue 293: tox startup is very slow due to setup.py and .tox virtualenvs
https://bitbucket.org/hpk42/tox/issues/293/tox-startup-is-very-slow-due-to-setuppy

Luke Plant:

The issue is described here:

https://bitbucket.org/pypa/setuptools/issues/450/egg_info-command-is-very-slow-if-there-are

It could be considered a performance bug in setuptools, but fixing that is looking quite hard. I'm wondering if fixing it via tox would be better - after all, tox is triggering the really poor performance of setup.py by putting thousands of files in the working directory, and then suffering from it.

Solution 1:  specify a toxworkdir outside the package directory - http://tox.readthedocs.org/en/latest/config.html#tox-global-settings

The problem with this is that it is difficult to find a place which would be appropriate when you consider multiple people working on a project, possibly on different platforms. Also, it needs to be applied in every project that notices the problem.

Solution 2: have a different default value for toxworkdir, something like ~/.cache/tox/virtualenvs/{project}  , where {project} gets substituted by something appropriate, like a mangled version of the working directory, perhaps combined with a platform name or something. This might also address issue #44 https://bitbucket.org/hpk42/tox/issues/44/cant-share-a-tox-directory-between-os-x

This is a significant pain point for me on multiple projects, I'd be willing to work on a solution if at acceptable approach were suggested.