Reduce memory consumption

[leonardehrenfried]

I'm working on a NeTEx file that is 12GB (!) large and I'm noticing that this library consumes quite a bit of memory.

I would like to increase memory efficiency and I'm wondering if the following changes would be okay for you:

• Using ints instead of BigInteger: PassingTimes have an order attribute which is unlikely to need the BigInteger
• Deduplicating LocalTime instances
• Potentially deduplicating string refs (but I'm not sure if this will really help)

@vpaturet @assadriaz

[vpaturet]

• BigInteger --> int is a breaking change
• Deduplicating string: possibly better handled by the consumer?
• Deduplicating LocalTime: low-hanging fruit.

[leonardehrenfried]

Does a breaking change mean it's going to be impossible?

[leonardehrenfried]

I'm asking because the latest patch release has a breaking change in it: opentripplanner/OpenTripPlanner#7433

[vpaturet]

The breaking change in 2.0.16 is limited and impacts few data producers/consumers.
We will take more breaking changes when moving to NeTEx 2.0, but I am unsure if that would include this type migration.