Protocol consolidation

When working with Elixir projects, using the Mix build tool, you may see output as follows:

Consolidated String.Chars
Consolidated Collectable
Consolidated List.Chars
Consolidated IEx.Info
Consolidated Enumerable
Consolidated Inspect

Those are all protocols that ship with Elixir and they are being consolidated. Because a protocol can dispatch to any data type, the protocol must check on every call if an implementation for the given type exists. This may be expensive.

However, after our project is compiled using a tool like Mix, we know all modules that have been defined, including protocols and their implementations. This way, the protocol can be consolidated into a very simple and fast dispatch module.

From Elixir v1.2, protocol consolidation happens automatically for all projects. We will build our own project in the Mix and OTP guide.