Improve performance by caching find_spec

Certain checkers upstream on pylint like import-error heavily use
find_spec. This method is IO intensive as it looks for files
across several search paths to return a ModuleSpec.

Since imports across files may repeat themselves it makes sense to cache
this method in order to speed up the linting process.

Local testing shows that caching reduces the total amount of calls to
find_module methods (used by find_spec) by about 50%. Linting the test
repository in the related issue goes from 58 seconds to 52 seconds. This
was on a NVME disk and after warmup, so timing gains may be bigger on
slower file systems like the one mentioned in the referenced issue.

Closes pylint-dev/pylint#9310.

astroid/interpreter/_import/spec.py

@@ -16,6 +16,8 @@
 import warnings
 import zipimport
 from collections.abc import Iterator, Sequence
+from dataclasses import dataclass, field
+from functools import lru_cache
 from pathlib import Path
 from typing import Any, Literal, NamedTuple, Protocol
 
@@ -423,7 +425,19 @@ def _find_spec_with_path(
     raise ImportError(f"No module named {'.'.join(module_parts)}")
 
 
+@dataclass(frozen=True)
+class SpecArgs:
+    key: tuple
+    modpath: list[str] = field(compare=False, hash=False)
+    path: Sequence[str] | None = field(compare=False, hash=False)
+
+
 def find_spec(modpath: list[str], path: Sequence[str] | None = None) -> ModuleSpec:
+    return _find_spec(SpecArgs(tuple(modpath), modpath, path))
+
+
+@lru_cache(maxsize=1024)
+def _find_spec(args: SpecArgs) -> ModuleSpec:
     """Find a spec for the given module.
 
     :type modpath: list or tuple
@@ -440,10 +454,10 @@ def find_spec(modpath: list[str], path: Sequence[str] | None = None) -> ModuleSp
     :return: A module spec, which describes how the module was
              found and where.
     """
-    _path = path or sys.path
+    _path = args.path or sys.path
 
     # Need a copy for not mutating the argument.
-    modpath = modpath[:]
+    modpath = args.modpath[:]
 
     submodule_path = None
     module_parts = modpath[:]
@@ -452,7 +466,7 @@ def find_spec(modpath: list[str], path: Sequence[str] | None = None) -> ModuleSp
     while modpath:
         modname = modpath.pop(0)
         finder, spec = _find_spec_with_path(
-            _path, modname, module_parts, processed, submodule_path or path
+            _path, modname, module_parts, processed, submodule_path or args.path
         )
         processed.append(modname)
         if modpath:
@@ -468,3 +482,7 @@ def find_spec(modpath: list[str], path: Sequence[str] | None = None) -> ModuleSp
             spec = spec._replace(submodule_search_locations=submodule_path)
 
     return spec
+
+
+def clear_spec_cache() -> None:
+    _find_spec.cache_clear()

astroid/manager.py

@@ -442,10 +442,12 @@ def clear_cache(self) -> None:
         # pylint: disable=import-outside-toplevel
         from astroid.brain.helpers import register_all_brains
         from astroid.inference_tip import clear_inference_tip_cache
+        from astroid.interpreter._import.spec import clear_spec_cache
         from astroid.interpreter.objectmodel import ObjectModel
         from astroid.nodes._base_nodes import LookupMixIn
         from astroid.nodes.scoped_nodes import ClassDef
 
+        clear_spec_cache()
         clear_inference_tip_cache()
         _invalidate_cache()  # inference context cache
 

tests/test_manager.py

@@ -23,6 +23,7 @@
     AttributeInferenceError,
 )
 from astroid.interpreter._import import util
+from astroid.interpreter._import.spec import clear_spec_cache
 from astroid.modutils import EXT_LIB_DIRS, module_in_path
 from astroid.nodes import Const
 from astroid.nodes.scoped_nodes import ClassDef, Module
@@ -41,6 +42,7 @@ class AstroidManagerTest(
 ):
     def setUp(self) -> None:
         super().setUp()
+        clear_spec_cache()
         self.manager = test_utils.brainless_manager()
 
     def test_ast_from_file(self) -> None:

tests/test_modutils.py

@@ -22,6 +22,7 @@
 from astroid import modutils
 from astroid.const import PY310_PLUS
 from astroid.interpreter._import import spec
+from astroid.interpreter._import.spec import clear_spec_cache
 
 from . import resources
 
@@ -41,6 +42,7 @@ class ModuleFileTest(unittest.TestCase):
     package = "mypypa"
 
     def tearDown(self) -> None:
+        clear_spec_cache()
         for k in list(sys.path_importer_cache):
             if "MyPyPa" in k:
                 del sys.path_importer_cache[k]