Blog compilation is very slow

[piperhaywood]

Compilation currently takes 5-9 seconds for 22 files, which is crazy long. This is probably because it tries to recompile the Arena blocks every time. Consider adding a blog-specific server setting that could be used for writing and omits the Arena blocks.

[piperhaywood]

@GemCopeland Flagging you on this so that you’re aware.

The build time is taking a very long time right now. It seems like this is partly due to it taking a while to get data from the Arena API.

The Eleventy folks are thinking about adding an --incremental flag that would mean that only the changed parts of the site would be rebuilt each time (see 11ty/eleventy#108). I’ve also suggested that we be allowed to exclude files within the config file, which would be another workaround.

In the meantime, the best thing to do is temporarily add these lines to the .eleventyignore file when working locally to avoid compiling the Arena data:

src/pages/thinking.md
src/_includes/layouts/thinking.njk
src/_data/arena.js

Leaving this open for awareness and since Eleventy might fix this in the future.

[piperhaywood]

@GemCopeland So @sambaldwin has recommended eleventy-fetch to speed things up, apparently it’s working really well for him! Might mean moving the data gathering out of /_data/arena.js and in to the Eleventy file, not sure, but could be worthwhile!