Arch Linux

cm100

Member

Registered: 2010-01-23

Posts: 16

measuring startup times of applications

Hi!

Is there a way to measure the startup time of an gui-application, for example firefox, beside using a real stopwatch :-)? I think the first problem is, to give a criterion, when the app. is fully loaded;  the second one is to measure this time.

cm100

geniuz

Member

Registered: 2010-04-10

Posts: 127

Re: measuring startup times of applications

$ man time

Kknd

Member

From: Brazil, Santa Catarina

Registered: 2007-08-15

Posts: 100

Website

Re: measuring startup times of applications

Take care, for most applications the loading time is dominated by loading libraries / other files from the file system. Due to cache, when you load the same application again or another application that share libraries, it will probably take less time to start, rendering the comparison incorrect (or at least incomplete).

cm100

Member

Registered: 2010-01-23

Posts: 16

Re: measuring startup times of applications

Thanks, "time" is nice. However is it possible to determine the moment when the app is fully loaded automatically?

Take care, for most applications the loading time is dominated by loading libraries / other files from the file system. Due to cache, when you load the same application again or another application that share libraries, it will probably take less time to start, rendering the comparison incorrect (or at least incomplete).

Yes that's true. I am mainly interested in cold starts, but I think

echo 3 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches

should do the job !?

dmz

Member

From: Sweden

Registered: 2008-08-27

Posts: 881

Website

Re: measuring startup times of applications

You'll have to create a counter in the source of the application that logs to a file or whatever.
time firefox will not work since it'll measure the time from that you've started it until you've terminated it.

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ls++ | LS_COLORS project | file management in vim | tons of utilities | configs | japh.se

byte

Member

From: Düsseldorf (DE)

Registered: 2006-05-01

Posts: 2,046

Re: measuring startup times of applications

Pro-tip for browsers: Make it load a site that's under your control (= you can read the webserver logs) at startup, via the homepage or session settings.

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1000

dmz

Member

From: Sweden

Registered: 2008-08-27

Posts: 881

Website

Re: measuring startup times of applications

Heh, that was nifty... But are you sure the browser is 'fully loaded'?

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ls++ | LS_COLORS project | file management in vim | tons of utilities | configs | japh.se