Hi Will,
On Fri, 2004-05-28 at 21:39, Will Cohen wrote:
I am thinking about ways to measure the startup time for various desktop applications. Obviously, a common one used is how soon after a menu item is selected can I do something in the application. However, this does not lend itself to being automated.
I assume that most of the applications can be launched from a command line. Are there applications or applets that are started from the menu and do not have corresponding command line invocations?
How similar are the gnome applications in startup? Do they use the same set of libraries? Would it be possible to have instrument a function in a common shared library that generally indicates that the application has initialized everything and is just waiting for the user to do something?
I'm not sure there is a reliable way to detect when an application has finished startup. Perhaps the first time the main loop goes idle would be a good indicator but I think you have difficulty distinguishing between that case and the case of the app blocking on the result of a CORBA call.
To give you an idea of where a GNOME application starting up spends its time see this:
http://mail.gnome.org/archives/desktop-devel-list/2004-April/msg00360.html
The only things really specific to the panel in this is the loading of main menu and applets/launchers.
Cheers, Mark.