Firefox/Projects/Startup Time Improvements/Static Build

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).