[drupal-devel] [feature] Lazy loading of theme system

[moshe weitzman]

Issue status update for http://drupal.org/node/19590

 Project:      Drupal
 Version:      cvs
 Component:    theme system
 Category:     feature requests
 Priority:     normal
 Assigned to:  moshe weitzman
 Reported by:  moshe weitzman
 Updated by:   moshe weitzman
 Status:       patch
 Attachment:   http://drupal.org/files/issues/init_theme_lazy.patch (1.04 KB)

Don't initialize the theme system during common.inc. Instead, wait for
the first call to theme() and do it there. There are 2 big benefits:
- sometimes you never call theme(), and thus don't ever need to include
theme engine and template. thats a performance win. examples include RSS
feeds, blogapi, distributed auth, ...
- module developers are currently forced to use hook_init() to set a
custom theme for a given page view. with this patch, they can wait and
do this during hook_menu(). Without this delay, module developers are
tempted, sometimes forced, to break the bootstrap and inadvertently
load all the modules for every page view. I almost did this in Organic
Groups module, where each group can shoose its own theme. You can break
the bootstrap by doing something as simple as node_load().
This is a tiny patch, and merits consideration for 4.6, i think.


moshe weitzman