Desktop application start up indicators

[Will Cohen]

I am thinking about ways to measure the startup time for various desktop 
applications. Obviously, a common one used is how soon after a menu item 
is selected can I do something in the application. However, this does 
not lend itself to being automated.

I assume that most of the applications can be launched from a command 
line. Are there applications or applets that are started from the menu 
and do not have corresponding command line invocations?

How similar are the gnome applications in startup? Do they use the same 
set of libraries? Would it be possible to have instrument a function in 
a common shared library that generally indicates that the application 
has initialized everything and is just waiting for the user to do 
something? If there is a common function could do something like:

start profiling
note time
command-line invocation of application
	<bunch of application initialization>
	<call library function that indicates application is running>
		<key function notes time, shutdown profiling>

-Will