Firefox/Projects/Startup Time Improvements/Static Build
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< Firefox | Projects | Startup Time Improvements
Overview
Description
A static build nets us a ~15% startup performance win on the Mac. A static build breaks XPCOM components, though, so a solution needs to be provided.
Bugs
- bug 525013 - investigate a more static build configuration of Firefox
- bug 532531 - make binary components work on the Mac
- bug 532769 - get a Linux static build going
- bug 532763 - make binary components work on Linux
- bug 532771 - get a Windows static build going
- bug 532765 - make binary components work on Windows
Results
There are no issues on Mac or Linux but Windows seems to build a dependency on firefox.exe into the components (see bug 532765).
We definitely want to use _-mdynamic-no-pic_ on the Mac. At one point in time this resulted in a 50% startup boost when running from an external USB HD. The next day we were down to a more reasonable 15%.
Areas of work
Results definitely need to be verified on all platforms. Need to fix our cold startup harness on the Mac to fully clear the OS caches (bug 532965).