Emacs: status update on the 'denote-data' cache for Denote

2026-09-29

A few days ago I announced that I am working on denote-data. The goal is to provide an opt-in, in-memory cache for Denote. It can be used to speed up certain computationally expensive operations. It must be opt-in because there are many users, myself included, who do not need such functionality (I program because the challenge is fun, just how I did with denote-sequence, for example).

I have a final update on this that I posted on denote.git issue 724 and am copying below. Any future changes will appear in the release notes of the next version of Denote. In short: it is happening.

The status update on denote.git

Hello again folks!

I have an update on the denote-data project. The code is in this denote.git branch for now: https://github.com/protesilaos/denote/tree/denote-data

What I am doing:

• Find the computationaly heavy functions.
• Write denote-data variants for them.
• Introduce variables to funcall VAR instead of calling the heavy functions directly.
• Make the denote-data-mode set those variables.

This way we can have any extension do what denote-data does. And this way denote-data can be its own package as well.

1. The first big problem I see now is how to make the caching functions async. I will figure this out by studying list-packages and related.
2. Then I want to study filenotify.el. @mentalisttraceur I have noted that your code is okay for copyright purposes, so I can check it out. Or you can send a PR, if you prefer.

Otherwise, I think this is almost done.

With an opt-in cache we can support other workflows that people have been asking for, such as in-buffer completion.