[Xcb] About next release of xcb/util

[Josh Triplett]

On Wed, Mar 24, 2010 at 01:43:44AM +0600, Mikhail Gusarov wrote:
> 
> Twas brillig at 11:37:40 23.03.2010 UTC-07 when bart at cs.pdx.edu did gyre and gimble:
> 
>  >> I've already been hit by a GNOME guy because when adding XCB support
>  >> to libstartup-notification I add to link this last one to 3 xcb-util
>  >> libs (event, atom and aux). And they say it slows down the
>  >> application startup (no clue about that, I'm not an expert in this
>  >> area).
> 
>  BCM> The dynamic loader has been really broken in this area in the
>  BCM> past.  IIRC it's mostly fixed now.
> 
> Sorry for offtopic - could you give any pointers? I'm bitten by exactly
> this performance problem on smallish embedded device and exactly with
> the libraries discussed: Enlightenment Foundation Libraries (lot of
> small .so) backed by XCB (another set of small .so).

Sounds awesome.  Can you tell us what device?  We always enjoy hearing
about fun gadgets, particularly when they run our software. :)

To answer part of your question: each shared library has a certain
overhead, and for a sufficiently short-running program with sufficiently
many libraries, this overhead becomes noticeable.

You can overcome some of this cost by prelinking at firmware build time,
or at install time if you allow upgrades other than full firmware
flashes.  However, prelinking introduces other fun problems.

Any details on the kind of performance issues you have experienced, more
specifically?

- Josh Triplett