Desktop application start up indicators

[Mark McLoughlin]

Hi Will,

On Fri, 2004-05-28 at 21:39, Will Cohen wrote:
> 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? 

	I'm not sure there is a reliable way to detect when an application has
finished startup. Perhaps the first time the main loop goes idle would
be a good indicator but I think you have difficulty distinguishing
between that case and the case of the app blocking on the result of a
CORBA call.

	To give you an idea of where a GNOME application starting up spends its
time see this:

http://mail.gnome.org/archives/desktop-devel-list/2004-April/msg00360.html

	The only things really specific to the panel in this is the loading of
main menu and applets/launchers.

Cheers,
Mark.