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Possible performance improvement around types with this argument #54260
Description
Bug Report
I've found a hotspot in a graphql-code-generator project where a comparison of types was taking a significant amount of time:
It comes from a packages/presets/client/src/babel.ts file, and it's related to the usage of a declare function. Specifically, the comparison between PluginObj types was costly.
The declare function from Babel, has the following signature:
export function declare<
O extends Record<string, any>,
R extends babel.PluginObj = babel.PluginObj
>(
builder: (api: BabelAPI, options: O, dirname: string) => R,
): (api: object, options: O | null | undefined, dirname: string) => R;I added the first generic parameter to the usage of declare, and it successfully eliminated the hotspot:
type ClientBabelPresetOptions = {
artifactDirectory?: string;
gqlTagName?: string;
};
export default declare<ClientBabelPresetOptions>((api, opts): PluginObj => {
// ...I understand that by doing this, TS could use a default for the second parameter, R, and hence skip the inference.
But here comes an interesting find — when I provided both generic parameters, it went back to the same (slow) performance result as in the beginning:
export default declare<ClientBabelPresetOptions, PluginObj>((api, opts): PluginObj => {Note: using PluginObj vs PluginObj<PluginPass> or even PluginObj<any> yields the same problem.
I paired with Mateusz Burzyński (@Andarist), and he found out that even though the types looked the same, the target type (PluginObj) had an extra this argument. That led to getVariancesWorker being called on rather expensive types.
Now, the question is: why in checkTypeArguments the fillMissingTypeArguments doesn't use the this type anyhow but the constraint's type is obtained with the this type:
getTypeWithThisArgument(instantiateType(constraint, mapper), typeArgument)If they would share the same ID then this particular case could work much faster.
🔎 Search Terms
performance, this, babel, getTypeWithThisArgument
🕗 Version & Regression Information
- TypeScript version: 5.0.4
⏯ Playground Link
Playground link with relevant code
💻 Code
The code could be found here: https://github.com/dotansimha/graphql-code-generator/blob/86ec182887698742af8e9f47ffe39f07772e54a4/packages/presets/client/src/babel.ts#L16.
Currently, this file has an "improved" version, but upon playing with it you can notice long check times when:
- You remove
ClientBabelPresetOptions - You add a second generic parameter,
PluginObj
To reproduce this in graphql-code-generator:
- Clone
- Install deps:
yarn - Run TSC
🙁 Actual behavior
Comparing two similar types takes a long time.
🙂 Expected behavior
Skip getVariancesWorker being called in this case.

Activity
RyanCavanaugh commentedon May 16, 2023
Mateusz Burzyński (@Andarist), leaving this backlog because it seems like you might want to take it. But if not, let me know, and I will reassign it to someone on the team. Thanks to both of you for the neat investigation.
Andarist commentedon May 16, 2023
Ryan Cavanaugh (@RyanCavanaugh) I could try to investigate this further but right now I'm blocked~ on understanding the role of
getTypeWithThisArgumentand why it's only applied on contraint~ and not on the provided type arguments.