By MattBrigade on

Hi, this is kind of a general question that has been lurking in the back of my mind of quite a while. Maybe someone could shed some light?

There are a handful of modules that are super handy for certain aspects of site maintenance, but really do not need to be installed on a full time basis. By disabling a module, but keeping the files on the server, does the module still have a memory footprint on the site?

I assume they don't, but just wanted to double check. Obviously I want my sites to perform their best, especially when the client opts for a shared hosting plan. This means using as little modules as I can get the job done with.

I appreciate the help!

Comments

bsenftner’s picture

bsenftner commented

I could be wrong about this, but I believe that disabled modules only consume resources when visiting the 'modules' page. The resources they consume is only what is necessary to generate their module entry in the module list of enabled and waiting-to-be-enabled modules.

Plus, if a disabled module was ever enabled, it may have left some tables in the database - if you want you can 'uninstall' such modules and their footprint will be even smaller. But in general, unless your database is gigantic, the presence of those tables is doing nothing.

-Blake
www.BlakeSenftner.com www.3D-Avatar-Store.com

MattBrigade’s picture

MattBrigade commented

Thanks for the response!

That's exactly what I was thinking. I wonder how I could go about testing this theory? If I come up with something, I'll be sure to post my findings.

MattBrigade’s picture

MattBrigade commented

I think I got it. Running the following lists all files that have been included using include(), include_once(), require() or require_once(). Probably best to do so at the theming layer to ensure all modules have had a chance to be loaded.

print_r(get_included_files()); (or if you have the Devel module installed:) dsm(get_included_files());

As expected, modules not activate are not included in the output. That's good enough for me!: