Slow startup

1) Is this a client library issue or a product issue?

It takes a very long time for require('googleapis') to run, because it eagerly requires every API submodule. Notwithstanding the fact that the source code uses static import rather than require, this package could most likely be built in such a way that submodules were required lazily, so that in code like this, for example…

const { google } = require('googleapis');

const auth = google.auth.fromJSON(credentials);
auth.scopes = ['https://www.googleapis.com/auth/drive.readonly'];

const client = google.drive('v3');
const { data } = await client.files.export(file);

…only the submodules for google.auth and google.drive would be required.

Alternatively, or additionally, exposing submodules directly could solve the problem:

const { fromJSON } = require('googleapis/auth');
const auth = fromJSON(credentials);

const client = require('googleapis/drive/v3');
const { data } = await client.files.export(file);

2) Did someone already solve this?

Couldn’t find any prior discussion

3) Do you have a support contract?

No

Environment details

• OS: MacOS
• Node.js version: 12.18.3
• npm version: 6.14.6
• googleapis version: 59

Steps to reproduce

function timed_require(x) {
  const start = Date.now();
  const mod = require(x);
  console.log(`required ${x} in ${Date.now() - start}ms`);
  return mod;
}

timed_require('googleapis');

[bcoe]

@alexblack wow, this is a blast from the past 😆, so I work on client libraries at Google now.

---

@alexblack @Rich-Harris @haohaolee, we just started publishing individual libraries from googleapis, which should significantly speed up startup/compile time:

You can find them under the @googleapis namespace on npm. Once you install a dependency, it should work almost identically to using the top level module, e.g.,

npm i @googleapis/drive

const drive = require('@googleapis/drive')
const auth = new drive.auth.GoogleAuth({
  // Scopes can be specified either as an array or as a single, space-delimited string.
  scopes: ['https://www.googleapis.com/auth/drive.readonly']
});
const authClient = await auth.getClient();
const client = drive.drive({
  version: 'v3',
  auth: authClient
});
const { data } = await client.files.export({fileId: 'abc123', mimeType: 'application/text'});

[bcoe]

Closing this issue, now that we have the ability to install individual APIs. Let us know if you continue to have any issues.