Speed sensation

[Lubos Lunak]

On Tuesday 22 of April 2003 12:02, Waldo Bastian wrote:
> On Tuesday 22 April 2003 08:21, Roger Larsson wrote:
> > What to do?
> > * Don't demand page text (code) on computers with enough memory.
> >   [See message from Andrew Morton below]
> > * Use less configuration files, i.e a registry :-(
> >   - A registry is a single point of failure.
> >   - Hard to edit and search with ordinary tools.
> >   + Fewer disc accesses, as long as it is continous on disk...
> >
> >   Well I do not like that but a persistent configuration file cache...
> >   (but it is costly to check that the cache is consistent...)
> >   Or gzip:ing all configuration files in .kde to one .gz
>
> It's called ksycoca :-)
>
> Ensuring that it is consistent is unfortunately one of the more time
> consuming operations during startup.

 I don't think it's that expensive.

> Especially if the cache needs to be rebuild.

 That's the only case when it does take some time (especially with many 
.desktop files). But this should be rare.

 However, maybe we could avoid even checking so many files. Maybe if there was 
one file touch_me_if_you_changed_something_ksycoca_depends_upon, and if was 
updated everytime one installs RPM packages or does make install or changes 
some .desktop file in some kcontrol module, then we could drop both all those 
KDirWatch's and the initial ksycoca-is-up-to-date check (or at least the 
latter one, if the sooner would be too much trouble).

 That would of course require some transitional phase, because of older apps, 
but eventually this could work. Assuming it would be really worth it ... 
which is a thing I'm not sure about. Does somebody have some numbers on this?

-- 
Lubos Lunak
KDE developer
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