prelink: is it worth it?

[Matthew Miller]

On Thu, Jul 09, 2009 at 07:55:38AM -0700, Ulrich Drepper wrote:
> hot disk cache to be fair).  The number of cycles for total startup is
> representative of the win.

I'm not sure that's the case. If I can get a 50% speed up to a program's
startup times, that sounds great, but if I then leave that program running
for days on end, I haven't actually won very much at all -- but I still pay
the price continuously. (That price being: fragility, verifiability, and of
course the prelinking activity itself.)

> Note, also small but frequently used apps benefit.  I run gcc etc a lot
> and like every single saved cycle.

Right, this actually seems more significant to me, even though it may be
less important in terms of marketing to new Linux desktop users. But
saving every last possible cycle is only one concern of many, particularly
when deciding on a default configuration.


-- 
Matthew Miller <mattdm at mattdm.org>
Senior Systems Architect 
Cyberinfrastructure Labs
Computing & Information Technology 
Harvard School of Engineering & Applied Sciences