Firefox/Projects/Startup Time Improvements: Difference between revisions

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__NOTOC__
= Overview =
= Overview =
'''Sprint lead:''' Dietrich <br/>
'''Sprinters:''' Ryan, Drew, David


;Description
'''Description:''' Improve startup time of Firefox and Fennec on all operating systems and platforms, including mobile devices.
:Investigate areas for Ts wins, find & fix issues that help Fennec and WinCE


= Goals / Use Cases =
'''Project lead:'''  <br/>
'''Project members:''' Taras Glek,  Ben Hsieh, Steve Fink, Michael Wu, Shawn Wilsher


* The core goal of this sprint is to achieve visibility into the performance-related problem areas during browser startup, and to use that visibility to create actionable bugs, creating a clear development path to move forward on.
'''Bugs:''' [http://tinyurl.com/ygbnzmd Open] | [http://tinyurl.com/yjp8d6w Fixed] | [http://bit.ly/5t9fA9 Fixed in 3.6]


* The secondary goal is to fix bugs in which a resolution path is already clear, and that would provide a human-noticeable win in Fennec or WinCe.
'''Results''': [http://graphs.mozilla.org/dashboard/snapshot/ Performance Snapshot] (snapshot numbers for last 7 days, and version comparisons)


;Non Goals
'''Graphs:''' [http://bit.ly/5fjmP9 Windows XP] | [http://bit.ly/8FjKvj Windows Vista] | [http://bit.ly/7aHx3r Mac Leopard] | [http://bit.ly/8wUHGs Linux]
:Fix all the identified areas. Should ensure that the relevant people are aware of bugs filed, and work to get the bugs with potentially big wins prioritized.


= Plan =
'''Status:''' [http://autonome.wordpress.com/tag/startup/ Weekly status updates]


* Create a baseline profile for testing
=Active Projects=
* Create and document measurement tools and strategies
<onlyinclude>
* Identify code paths that take the most time at startup
{|border="1" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="2"
* File bugs for problems found to be actionable
!Estimated win
!Bug #
!Summary
!Owner
!Status
!Notes
|-
|~10%
|[[Firefox/Projects/2010Q3_Dirty_Startup_Reduction|"Dirty Profile" Startup Reduction]]
|Constant startup relative to profile size
|Shawn Wilsher
|
|
|-
|significant
|{{bug|558200}}
|Extension profiler platform api
|Steve Fink
|
| There is an easy way to provide feedback to extension developers to help them figure out why their extension is misbehaving. We need to implement that ASAP, so typical firefox installs(with lots of extensions) can be fast
|}
</onlyinclude>


= Tasks =
=Help Wanted/Onhold=
{|border="1" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="2"
!Estimated win
!Bug #
!Summary
!Owner
!Status
!Notes
|-
|~8%
|{{bug|561842}}
|Fold libraries into libxul
|Ted Mielczarek
|
|proof of concept done
|-
|up to 40%
|{{bug|531406}}
|Optimize code locality in binaries. Working on enabling pgo atm.
|Taras Glek
|
|Linux almost done, need to figure out integration. Windows proof of concept needs work.
See [http://blog.mozilla.com/tglek/2010/02/19/teaching-ld-to-optimize-binaries-for-startup/ blog post] for more details. Taras and Ehsan working on Windows locality improvements ({{bug|553721}}).
|-
|~10%
|{{bug|512584}}
|Fast paths for Cc/Ci
|
|
|Confirmed win. Unfortunately this approach touches a lot of sensitive code, might be easier to port js to not use Cc/Ci
|-
|TBD
|{{bug|513149}} {{bug|553456}}
|Speed up CSS parsing
|Zack Weinberg
|
|
|-
|significant
|{{bug|559663}}
|Measuring IOPs
|
|
|Our current infrastructure does not measure cold startup effectively, it should.
|
|-
|TBD
|{{bug|569629}}
|Get rid of static initializers
|
|
|These slowdown library loading, cause a lot of pagefaults on gcc platforms.
|}


* Define the test environment
 
** Create a baseline profile to measure startup against (Dietrich)
Other efforts:
** Prefs, platform-specific issues
* {{bug|514083}} HFS+ compression on Mac OSX 10.6
* Create an easily accessible timeline of the startup path (David)
 
*** STATUS (2009-07-21): Compiling and linking. We needed to use NS_COM instead of NS_EXPORT. (I would like to know why/how/etc.)
'''Measurement & Testing Projects'''
*** HOW TO USE THIS PATCH: [https://wiki.mozilla.org/Firefox/Sprints/Startup_Time_Improvements/StartupPatchUsage#Quick_Start]
* cold startup testing
*** Split the patch up into 3 patches for easier review: CPP, JS and Instrumentation
** {{bug|532965}} - fix Mac cold startup test
* Mine the Ts DTrace visualization for opportunities (Drew)
** {{bug|522807}} - make windows cold startup test
** {{bug|504858}} - Investigate delaying initialization of bookmarks toolbar
 
** {{bug|504872}} - Investigate further delaying initialization of the search bar
* dirty profile testing
** See DTrace links below also
** {{bug|527596}} - dirty Tp
* Log and mine filesystem operations during startup (Ryan)
** {{bug|FILEME}} - test an all-dirty profile
** [http://boomswaggerboom.wordpress.com/2009/06/24/firefox-for-mac-os-x-and-filesystem-related-system-calls/ Josh Aas's post]
 
** checking out Xperf and others for Windows work
=Future Projects=
** maybe write a new dtrace script for targeting offenders
 
* {{bug|523146}} - micro-benchmarking test framework
* {{bug|522375}} - built-in startup measurement
 
* {{bug|509755}} - put modules into a jar
* {{bug|FILEME}} - [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=279839#c29 string pool for jsxpcom]
* taking advantage of tracing
** figure out where we're not tracing in the startup log
** [http://blog.mozilla.com/dmandelin/2009/02/26/tracevis-performance-visualization-for-tracemonkey/ dmandelin's blog post]
** traceviz ({{bug|497999}})
* timeline of the startup path (David, Vlad)
** Status: incomplete (held up on hangs, nspr changes)
** [https://wiki.mozilla.org/Firefox/Sprints/Startup_Time_Improvements/StartupPatchUsage#Quick_Start docs]
** {{bug|480735}} instrumentation
** {{bug|503605}} visualization ([http://mozilla.ddahl.com/startup/timeline-similie.html Simile timeline], [http://people.mozilla.org/~dietrich/ddahl_sample_output.txt raw log])
 
=Inactive Projects=
 
* {{bug|507101}} - combining js components
* minification
** {{bug|524858}} - minify js
** {{bug|513132}} - minify css
** {{bug|523479}} - minify extension's contents
* Mine the Ts DTrace viz/logs (Drew)
** Status: complete, moved on to filesystem operations below
** Results
*** cold startup is heavily I/O-bound. 90% of cold startup time is spent in page faults and other I/O syscalls, especially read, getattrlist, and stat.
*** majority of time spent after Firefox actually gets up and running is in XBL and CSS.
* Log and mine filesystem operations during startup (Ryan, Drew)
** Status: complete, bugs filed for egregious offenders
** Results
*** checking out Xperf and others for Windows work
*** investigating dtrace timing/FS cache issues on OS X
*** investigating dtrace timing/FS cache issues on OS X
**** Instruments appears to have the same issues
**** Instruments appears to have the same issues
*** Simple JS file exec script has yielded [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/buglist.cgi?bug_id=504513 some results]
*** Simple JS file exec script has yielded [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/buglist.cgi?bug_id=504513 some results]
* Mine bugzilla for existing startup bugs and tag them (Dietrich)
** References
* Hot vs. cold testing
*** [http://boomswaggerboom.wordpress.com/2009/06/24/firefox-for-mac-os-x-and-filesystem-related-system-calls/ Josh Aas's post on filesystem calls]
** Running with fastload crippled/disabled
*** [http://blog.mozilla.com/tglek/2009/07/01/python-gdb-logging-file-io/ Taras' post] on using GDB for logging
*** [[Firefox/Projects/Startup_Time_Improvements/IO_Scratchpad]]
*** [[Firefox/Projects/Startup_Time_Improvements/adw_notes|Drew's notes]]
*** [[Firefox/Projects/Startup_Time_Improvements/joelr_notes|Joel's notes]]
* Find dead code with JSHydra (David Dahl)
** Status: incomplete, needs tuning and file bugs on dead code found
** {{bug|506128}} - run jshydra to find js functions that have no callers
* JSHydra continuous testing
** possible test scenarios
*** ending semicolon bug (XXX)
*** dead code finder
 
=Completed Projects=
 
[http://tinyurl.com/yjp8d6w Fixed startup bugs]


= References =
= References =


Meta-bugs and Searches
;Meta bugs
* [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/buglist.cgi?quicksearch=sw%3A%5Bts%5D bugs with ts whiteboard]
* {{bug|459117}} Fennec performance meta bug
* {{bug|479078}} contemporary startup meta bug
* {{bug|447581}} Startup meta bug
* {{bug|447581}} not-much-used startup meta bug
* {{bug|479078}} Startup research meta bug
* {{bug|7251}} old school startup meta bug
* {{bug|7251}} very old startup meta bug


Needs investigation
* Vlad's blog posts
* string pool for jsxpcom: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=279839#c29
** [http://blog.vlad1.com/2009/06/17/firefox-startup-wrangling/ Vlad's June posting on startup work]
** Vlad's July posts:
*** [http://blog.vlad1.com/2009/07/27/startup-part-1/ 1]
*** [http://blog.vlad1.com/2009/07/27/startup-again/ 2 - fs cache]
*** [http://blog.vlad1.com/2009/07/28/startup-again-2/ 3 - event processing]
*** [http://blog.vlad1.com/2009/07/28/measuring-startup/ 4 - measuring startup]
*** [http://blog.vlad1.com/2009/07/29/startup-again-3/ 5 iosnoop]


Previous work
* zpao's JS treemap visualizations
* Startup Timeline: {{bug|480735}}
** Visualize Startup Timeline {{bug|503605}}
* [http://blog.vlad1.com/2009/06/17/firefox-startup-wrangling/ Vlad's June posting on startup work]
* zpao's treemap visualizations
** [http://playground.zpao.com/dtrace_treemaps2/ newer]
** [http://playground.zpao.com/dtrace_treemaps2/ newer]
** [http://playground.zpao.com/dtrace_treemaps/ older]
** [http://playground.zpao.com/dtrace_treemaps/ older]
* Taras' Fennec Startup Work
* Taras' Fennec Startup Work
** {{bug|459117}} "make fennec faster", mostly startup bugs
** {{bug|459117}} "make fennec faster", mostly startup bugs
Line 69: Line 188:
** {{bug|470116}} various timing scripts
** {{bug|470116}} various timing scripts


Tips, Tools
* [[Performance:Home_Page]]
* [http://aegisknight.org/2009/04/flushing-disk-cache/ Flushing Windows' disk cache]
 
==Tips, Tools==
 
* Cold startup
** [http://aegisknight.org/2009/04/flushing-disk-cache/ Flushing Windows' disk cache]
** [http://tuvix.apple.com/DOCUMENTATION/Darwin/Reference/ManPages/man8/purge.8.html Flushing Mac OS X's disk cache]
** [[Firefox/Projects/Startup_Time_Improvements_Notes]]: Vlad's emails about cold startup, including Linux (maybe move this info to this page)
 
* Windows Prefetch/Superfetch
** [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prefetcher XP Prefetch wiki]
** [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Vista_I/O_technologies#SuperFetch Vista/Win7 SuperFetch wiki]
** [http://members.rushmore.com/~jsky/id37.html useful Pre/SuperFetch overview]
** [http://jessekornblum.com/presentations/dodcc08-2.html Presentation slides on the guts of Pref/SuperFetch by military forensic analyst]
*** Prefetch
**** Profile for each application: List of DLLs used, Run count, Time stamps
**** Prefetch files stored in %SystemRoot%\Prefetch: .pf extension, Up to 128 are kept
**** Can tell if same app run from multiple locations
*** SuperFetch
**** turn off: net stop sysmain
**** AG*.db files, contain "scenarios" for preloading
** [http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/2007.03.vistakernel.aspx Technet article on Vista mem mgmnt]
** [http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-vista/change-superfetch-to-only-cache-system-boot-files-in-vista/ registry keys for toggling SuperFetch]
 
* DTrace
* DTrace
** [https://wiki.mozilla.org/Performance/Optimizing_JavaScript_with_DTrace nuts and bolts how-to for getting dtrace running with mozilla]
** [https://wiki.mozilla.org/Performance/Optimizing_JavaScript_with_DTrace nuts and bolts how-to for getting dtrace running with mozilla]
Line 78: Line 219:
** [http://wikis.sun.com/display/DTrace/Introduction intro from dtrace guidebook, really useful but not mozilla/js-specific]
** [http://wikis.sun.com/display/DTrace/Introduction intro from dtrace guidebook, really useful but not mozilla/js-specific]
** [http://blogs.sun.com/jmr/entry/dtrace_mozilla_rfe_javascript_tracing brief descriptions of the javascript* probes]
** [http://blogs.sun.com/jmr/entry/dtrace_mozilla_rfe_javascript_tracing brief descriptions of the javascript* probes]
** [http://blog.mozilla.com/dmandelin/2008/02/14/dtrace-c-mysteries-solved/ David Mandelin's notes on tracing C++ code]


Fastload:
* comparing dynamic linking time between firefox and safari on mac
** DYLD_PRINT_STATISTICS=YES /Applications/Firefox.app/Contents/MacOS/firefox-bin
** DYLD_PRINT_STATISTICS=YES open -a Safari
 
==Fastload==
* why does js_Execute take so long for fastloaded components?
* why does js_Execute take so long for fastloaded components?
* [http://groups.google.com/group/mozilla.dev.platform/browse_thread/thread/42c0e9df84b935fe what is fastload?]
* [http://groups.google.com/group/mozilla.dev.platform/browse_thread/thread/42c0e9df84b935fe what is fastload?]
* [http://kb.mozillazine.org/Nglayout.debug.disable_xul_fastload fastload pref docs]
* [http://kb.mozillazine.org/Nglayout.debug.disable_xul_fastload fastload pref docs]


Measuring Ts:
==Measuring Ts==
* starup-unix.pl in mozilla/tools/performance/startup
 
** edit it to use http://pastebin.mozilla.org/663935 in place of startup-test.html
We've been using a method Vlad blogged about [http://blog.vlad1.com/2009/07/28/measuring-startup/ here]. The steps are below.
** set <code>dom.allow_scripts_to_close_windows</code> and <code>browser.dom.window.dump.enabled</code> to true in your testing profile
 
** run it in a loop to collect more stable results:
# save [http://people.mozilla.com/~vladimir/misc/startup.html this html file] somewhere locally
<pre style="white-space: pre-wrap">
# create a new profile, run Firefox with it at least once, so all files are created, etc
#!/bin/bash
# execute this command, with your profile name substituted, and invoking firefox in a way appropriate for your platform:
cd ~/moz/trunk/mozilla/tools/performance/startup
 
for ((i=0; i < 5; i++)) do perl startup-unix.pl ~/moz/trunk/build-dbg/dist/MinefieldDebug.app/Contents/MacOS/firefox-bin -P startup >> results.txt; done;
<code>
./firefox -P YourProfileName -no-remote file:///..../startup.html#`python -c 'import time; print int(time.time() * 1000);'`
</code>
 
The following is specific to Mac OSX and is required to evict Firefox code pages from memory and clear the Unified Buffer Cache (UBC). <code>purge</code> does NOT do this.
 
<pre>
#!/bin/sh
 
FF=/Volumes/Fujitsu80Gb
 
diskutil unmount force $FF
diskutil mount /dev/disk1s2
 
$FF/Minefield$*.app/Contents/MacOS/firefox-bin -no-remote -foreground -P clean file://$FF/startup.html#`python -c 'import time; print int(time.time() * 1000);'`
</pre>
</pre>
This assumes that your removable media is at /dev/disk1s2.
==Test Coverage==
This is an index of Firefox startup scenarios which need automated test coverage.
TODO:
* groups: chrome, content, extensions, labs, other?
* mark which need no-chrome testing
{| border=solid black 1px
| test || warm start || cold start || notes
|-
| empty profile ||style="background-color: lawngreen"|yes ||style="background-color: lawngreen"|yes ||
|-
| everything dirty || || || {{bug|515540}}
|-
| min places ||style="background-color: lawngreen"|yes ||style="background-color: lawngreen"|yes || informed by places-stats, {{bug|515540}}
|-
| med places ||style="background-color: lawngreen"|yes ||style="background-color: lawngreen"|yes || ditto
|-
| max places ||style="background-color: lawngreen"|yes ||style="background-color: lawngreen"|yes || ditto
|-
| med session || || || informed by test pilot data
|-
| max session || || || ditto
|-
| downloads || || ||
|-
| url-classifier data || || || data is fully downloaded, should test page-load for a match and no match
|-
| form history|| || ||
|-
| passwords || || ||
|-
| plugins || || ||
|-
| content preferences || || ||
|-
| extensions || || || top 5?
|-
| extension update || || ||
|-
| application update || || ||
|-
| persona applied || || ||
|-
| weave || || ||
|-
| jetpack || || ||
|-
| ubiquity || || ||
|-
| page links are visited || || ||
|-
| page has microformats || || ||
|-
| page is ssl || || ||
|-
| page has plugin || || ||
|}

Latest revision as of 17:51, 20 July 2011

Overview

Description: Improve startup time of Firefox and Fennec on all operating systems and platforms, including mobile devices.

Project lead:
Project members: Taras Glek, Ben Hsieh, Steve Fink, Michael Wu, Shawn Wilsher

Bugs: Open | Fixed | Fixed in 3.6

Results: Performance Snapshot (snapshot numbers for last 7 days, and version comparisons)

Graphs: Windows XP | Windows Vista | Mac Leopard | Linux

Status: Weekly status updates

Active Projects

Estimated win Bug # Summary Owner Status Notes
~10% "Dirty Profile" Startup Reduction Constant startup relative to profile size Shawn Wilsher
significant bug 558200 Extension profiler platform api Steve Fink There is an easy way to provide feedback to extension developers to help them figure out why their extension is misbehaving. We need to implement that ASAP, so typical firefox installs(with lots of extensions) can be fast


Help Wanted/Onhold

Estimated win Bug # Summary Owner Status Notes
~8% bug 561842 Fold libraries into libxul Ted Mielczarek proof of concept done
up to 40% bug 531406 Optimize code locality in binaries. Working on enabling pgo atm. Taras Glek Linux almost done, need to figure out integration. Windows proof of concept needs work.

See blog post for more details. Taras and Ehsan working on Windows locality improvements (bug 553721).

~10% bug 512584 Fast paths for Cc/Ci Confirmed win. Unfortunately this approach touches a lot of sensitive code, might be easier to port js to not use Cc/Ci
TBD bug 513149 bug 553456 Speed up CSS parsing Zack Weinberg
significant bug 559663 Measuring IOPs Our current infrastructure does not measure cold startup effectively, it should.
TBD bug 569629 Get rid of static initializers These slowdown library loading, cause a lot of pagefaults on gcc platforms.


Other efforts:

Measurement & Testing Projects

  • cold startup testing

Future Projects

Inactive Projects

  • bug 507101 - combining js components
  • minification
  • Mine the Ts DTrace viz/logs (Drew)
    • Status: complete, moved on to filesystem operations below
    • Results
      • cold startup is heavily I/O-bound. 90% of cold startup time is spent in page faults and other I/O syscalls, especially read, getattrlist, and stat.
      • majority of time spent after Firefox actually gets up and running is in XBL and CSS.
  • Log and mine filesystem operations during startup (Ryan, Drew)
  • Find dead code with JSHydra (David Dahl)
    • Status: incomplete, needs tuning and file bugs on dead code found
    • bug 506128 - run jshydra to find js functions that have no callers
  • JSHydra continuous testing
    • possible test scenarios
      • ending semicolon bug (XXX)
      • dead code finder

Completed Projects

Fixed startup bugs

References

Meta bugs

Tips, Tools

  • comparing dynamic linking time between firefox and safari on mac
    • DYLD_PRINT_STATISTICS=YES /Applications/Firefox.app/Contents/MacOS/firefox-bin
    • DYLD_PRINT_STATISTICS=YES open -a Safari

Fastload

Measuring Ts

We've been using a method Vlad blogged about here. The steps are below.

  1. save this html file somewhere locally
  2. create a new profile, run Firefox with it at least once, so all files are created, etc
  3. execute this command, with your profile name substituted, and invoking firefox in a way appropriate for your platform:

./firefox -P YourProfileName -no-remote file:///..../startup.html#`python -c 'import time; print int(time.time() * 1000);'`

The following is specific to Mac OSX and is required to evict Firefox code pages from memory and clear the Unified Buffer Cache (UBC). purge does NOT do this. 

#!/bin/sh

FF=/Volumes/Fujitsu80Gb

diskutil unmount force $FF
diskutil mount /dev/disk1s2

$FF/Minefield$*.app/Contents/MacOS/firefox-bin -no-remote -foreground -P clean file://$FF/startup.html#`python -c 'import time; print int(time.time() * 1000);'`

This assumes that your removable media is at /dev/disk1s2.

Test Coverage

This is an index of Firefox startup scenarios which need automated test coverage.

TODO:

  • groups: chrome, content, extensions, labs, other?
  • mark which need no-chrome testing
test warm start cold start notes
empty profile yes yes
everything dirty bug 515540
min places yes yes informed by places-stats, bug 515540
med places yes yes ditto
max places yes yes ditto
med session informed by test pilot data
max session ditto
downloads
url-classifier data data is fully downloaded, should test page-load for a match and no match
form history
passwords
plugins
content preferences
extensions top 5?
extension update
application update
persona applied
weave
jetpack
ubiquity
page links are visited
page has microformats
page is ssl
page has plugin
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