Startup Time 1.79

[cim]

Looks like a winner - start-up with a flushed cache in about 2 minutes. I can live with that, given the low power of this machine.

That's definitely more reasonable.

Comparing the formats directly here with just over 100 installed, full debug build:
- mostly installed as OXZs: 11 seconds cold start, 6-7 seconds warm start
- mostly installed as OXPs: 8 seconds cold start, 5 seconds warm start

and same set, deployment build:
- mostly installed as OXZs: 8 seconds cold start, 4-5 seconds warm start
- mostly installled as OXPs: 5-6 seconds cold start, 3-4 seconds warm start

There's one more possible optimisation I've spotted in how ship scripts / JS AIs are loaded from disk - though it's more for ongoing play rather than startup savings, and should help OXP format a bit as well.

[Thargoid]

OK, now we're really getting somewhere.

Full load-out except Gallery, without a cache flush - 53s startup.
Full load-out with new version of Gallery and a cache flush - 111s startup.

This is for a full debug build (the only one I'm ever likely to be using I think), so all points to a lot of nice optimising there. Nice one, a Right On Commander all round methinks, and nicely in time for 1.80.

[cim]

But the problem points further: every system.addShips() need exponentially more time in 1.79 if many OXZs are installed.

Well spotted - there's a nasty inefficiency in the plist AI loader that I probably introduced when adjusting it to allow JS AIs. Fixed in 8218ab5 so that should be considerably faster in tonight's nightly.

[Diziet Sma]

Some nice detective work, guys!

Acer Aspire One 722 netbook, although mine has been upgraded to 4GB RAM but a 1GHz C-50 processor (the latter being the limiting factor).

To my knowledge there's nothing special about the installation (Windows 7 Home Prem SP1)

It would be interesting one day to see how your machine would handle without being hamstrung by Win7. That's a lot of overhead for such a low-spec laptop.

[Thargoid]

It has flown dual-boot with both Ubuntu and Mint in the past (including a USB live disk of Ubuntu 14.02 a couple of days ago to try and help resolve my deceased MyPassport hard drive). It's not too bad, but also not significantly better than Win7 for general usage and I took the attitude that generally it isn't broken so I didn't bother to "fix it".

Fundamentally the processor isn't too powerful, but it serves the needs I have for it, and does trade off (along with a chunky battery) that it'll run all day when away from mains power.

[Norby]

(more fixes yesterday)

Well done cim, my first:second loading times with 165 OXZs are dropped from 160s:110s to 23s:9s.

After Gallery and CCL updates my startup times are down to 10s:3s!

My 1GHz 1GB netbook started in 118s:34s, acceptable from a machine which can draw 15FPS only in the game.