Your choice, but I noticed the Anarki arc.sh startup script is bash-dependant, which is actually less widespread than Perl. Not totally sure, but the xBSD doesn't have it by default, where they have Perl. Perl is everywhere (even on Windows, see ActivePerl), seriously. Similarly, nearly Linux distro have it by default, where, same thing, some doesn't have bash (I'm sure of this, because I got bad surprises because of this in the past, although don't remember which ones. Can check if you want). Bash is a big fat cow.

Personal opinion, but a shell-script bash-dependant is just killing the shell-script idea. I code shell scripts when I need to be really sure any Unix will make it run, and this implies making it strictly Posix-sh compatible.

> I'd rather not rely on hardcoding what files get loaded at startup

Yes this is a big sucking point. But there is a workaround:...

> especially since anarki modifies libs.arc to autoload things in load/

... then makes it modify as(-fast).scm instead :-P. Or even libs.arc, that just would contains autoloaded stuff (and not the "core" libs).

> be necessary to use arc for any sort of scripting

Yep, but not only. Not only at all. This is related to my way of working, but I'll expose it nevertheless so that people can understand my need for fast app startups, because I know a lot of people like me. I, of course, can understand the "eternal session" stuff, I sincerely find it smart, but really, I know very few people that can stick with it (I can't). I mean, for what I know, you're really not the majority.

I'm actually OK with a script taking a long time (I sometimes like scripts to take time, it gives me the impression it's doing a lot of work and that I'm smart, I'm making the computer do the stuff :-D + allow me to pause for a second => think before typing). It's not OK when I'm in an trial/error process, but even there it's not so bad if I loose some time. Always pleasant to see the computer work, even for nothing.

But I need to spawn/terminate, spawn/terminate processes, and this is have to be quick. Because I've always at least 2 or 3 virtual desktops (eeePC, so it's not "real" vdesktops, I need nearly one vdesktop by app on this tiny screen. Change vdesktop by window, same thing), and needing to find the one in which I started the process just plainly sucks my balls (seriously; even if it takes 2 secs: useless stuff, waste of time). Say for a terminal, I just hit ctrl-shift-enter, a new xterm is spawn in 0.1 sec and I can do what I have to do right now. Same for my web browser, which is Conkeror (or Chrome on Windows but same here, because it starts very quickly), and can be launched in daemon mode so that when you call it, it's there in < 1 sec (and this is why I can't consider the fat Firefox). Same for everything, or should be. For instance, I actually plan to learn vim because Emacs is too long to start. I plan to drop bash, because with the smart completion feature, it's not instant to start and for a shell this is just a sin.

I'm a big procrastinator, and when I want to do some work, this is not often, and if the computer makes it difficult (slow to start), well I come back to procrastinate. Seriously. Even 1 sec can suffise. And this bugs me a lot, because computers nowadays, WTH they've got GHz of power, this should not happen.

I insistate on all this not because I think this is the right way, but because you (I mean, not you rntz personally, I mean people in general) are crazy to ignore this.

Yes, 0.1 sec makes a difference. I'm sure you know about the Google experiment to try to load x * 2 instead of x (don't remember the exact numbers) results by page, the load time increase was something as insignifiant as +0.1 sec, and they actually loose a real % of customers. (If you don't know about this XP, tell me, will go seek for the link, it's very very interesting). People - just - respond - to - speed. I already said that, but Google made his fucking huge empire based merely on this single point. And they continue to expand their empire applying this recipe (Chrome, Google OS which, I bet everything on this, will be 10x faster to start than Ubuntu, GMail on mobile that just indicates "Download GMail for your mobile - it's blazing fast", etc.)

So, but if you think Google is crap, you're crazy to ignore the speed issues.

FTR, if an app can't be fast, good solutions include applications that would not allow multiple-instances, but will come back in focus when called again. Another good thing is, for terminal, tilda/yakuake. Another interesting idea is a client/server idea, where the client is lightweight where the server, launched as a daemon, is long to start (the evsrv started with this idea).