FAQ 9-1

Question 9.1

Starting Gnus is really slow, how to speed it up?

Answer

The reason for this could be the way Gnus reads its active file, see the node "The Active File" in the Gnus manual for things you might try to speed the process up. An other idea would be to byte compile your ~/.gnus.el (say ‘M-x byte-compile-file RET ~/.gnus.el RET’ to do it). Finally, if you have require statements in your .gnus, you could replace them with with-eval-after-load, which loads the stuff not at startup time, but when it’s needed. Say you’ve got this in your ~/.gnus.el:

(require 'message)
(add-to-list 'message-syntax-checks '(sender . disabled))

then as soon as you start Gnus, message.el is loaded. If you replace it with

(with-eval-after-load "message"
  (add-to-list 'message-syntax-checks '(sender . disabled)))

it’s loaded when it’s needed.