thymol-node performance

[tburny]

We are using thymol-node as engine for the Node.js variant of Patternlab. However we experienced that compared to the compile speeds of other users(typically 5-10 seconds), Thymol is about a magnitude slower.
We were using a combination of jsdom and jQuery to build about 130 templates with a total size of ~ 1,2 MB, which took 90 seconds. By replacing jsdom with Domino, we could bring compile times down to about 30 seconds. However, Domino has a slightly different attribute handling, as described in fgnass/domino#27.
Therefor we had to patch Thymol and would be happy to contribute a technology independent pull request.

Further speed improvements could be archieved by switching to a widely known library such as https://github.com/cheeriojs/cheerio which basically combines the power of jQuery with an 8 times speed improvement over jsdom. However this would required more severe changes to the codebase.

Why is jQuery required by thymol-node anyways when it is only used for simple things like finding elements?

[jjbenson]

I'm very pleased to hear that you've found an interesting and innovative use for Thymol and would be happy to help in any way I can.
Could you please open a discussion on the user forum?

[jjbenson]

The latest builds (2.0.1-pre.5) of thymol and thymol-node do not require jQuery.