[gstreamer-bugs] [Bug 503675] kill the gstreamer registry file

[GStreamer (bugzilla.gnome.org)]

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  GStreamer | don't know | Ver: 0.10.14

Jeff Fortin changed:

           What    |Removed                     |Added
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
             Status|NEEDINFO                    |UNCONFIRMED




------- Comment #4 from Jeff Fortin  2007-12-16 00:18 UTC -------
Nope, just standard ubuntu installations on regular local ext3 partitions. Mind
you this is not just me: I had to "fix" this on my two computers regularly, and
on two friends' computers which I had nothing to do with in daily use (anyway,
they are using different ubuntu releases, so not an ubuntu problem I would
expect).

The "lot more people" argument is difficult to evaluate: maybe I'm the only
human out there that noticed that registry file and the fact that clearing it
solves problems.
Other users would (or already did) thik "meh, totem/gst sucks" and install VLC,
never to touch totem/gst again.

Lot slower you say? I have all the plugins (good/bad/ugly, with multiverse
variants, with w32codecs and gst pitfdll) I can get my paws on, here is my
stopwatch benchmarks launching totem:

- without write access to the gst folder (no registry): 2 seconds 30
- with write access and no existing registry: 1 second 90
- with write access and existing registry: 1 second 70
(cold boots between each trials)

Warm startup time of 1 second 55.

My machine: 1.8 ghz pentium M, 768 mb of DDR ram, 5400 rpm IDE hard drive.
Ubuntu 7.10 (which is known for being slower than previous releases).

My conclusions from those rough benchmarks:
- the launch times are very low no matter what you do
- I don't even know if those numbers are "statistically significative" - don't
forget they have limited precision as I need to physically start and stop my
wristwatch. I did run each trial a few times (lots of reboots), and you can
easily get an error margin of half a second or worse!
- do we really care about a variance of rougly 40% of a second on the cold
launch of an app like totem? Wouldn't benefits of not having that registry
offset gaining 400 ms of cold startup time?


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