[KPhotoAlbum] Startup speed issues

[Robert L Krawitz]

   From: Lars Clausen <lars at raeder.dk>
   Date: Sun, 08 Oct 2006 16:56:44 +0200

   Poking a little further, it seems that the number of tags involved
   makes a big difference.  I added to all pictures a Person tag, a
   Location tag and two Keyword tags (all the same), and now startup
   times are:

   Splash screen appears: 0:05
   End of "Loading Main Window": 3:30
   End of "Searching for New Images": 5:15
   Main window appears: 6:50
   Image list appears: 9:50

   So the startup time is directly proportional to the number of tags
   assigned to pictures, it seems.  This is all with a non-DB enabled
   version, since the DB isn't as I understand it stable yet.

That doesn't surprise me.  Last I looked the tag creation looked like
it had room for improvement.

   Seeing as how the "Searching for New Images" part takes about 80%
   of the startup time with a "good" index.xml, here's an idea for
   reducing it: Keep track of when leaf directories have been
   modified, and if a leaf directory hasn't been modified since last
   save, a) there's no new images in there, and b) there's no new
   subdirectories in there.  Thus it doesn't need to be scanned.  In
   my case, this would cut the number of inodes queried from about
   17000 to about 250.

Better yet, turn off search for new images at startup and do it
manually when you add images.

-- 
Robert Krawitz                                     <rlk at alum.mit.edu>

Tall Clubs International  --  http://www.tall.org/ or 1-888-IM-TALL-2
Member of the League for Programming Freedom -- mail lpf at uunet.uu.net
Project lead for Gutenprint   --    http://gimp-print.sourceforge.net

"Linux doesn't dictate how I work, I dictate how Linux works."
--Eric Crampton