On Tue, Aug 08, 2017 at 06:09:05PM -0700, Robert Strong wrote:
One thing that comes to mind is how some code registers app specific
observers so the code runs after the UI is displayed.
...
Perhaps having a single category for after UI has been displayed that
components can specify in their manifests so they are initialized at that
time similar to how profile-after-change is typically used. This way they
wouldn't have to initialize just to register an observer so the work
happens after theUI is displayed.
The running after first paint part is probably fairly easy. For
most of the cases I'm thinking of, a promise that resolves at
the right time, in the middle of a promise chain, should be
enough.
It's the figuring out what's causing things to run, and ensuring
that things get run before first paint that's more of a problem.
We do a lot of async things at startup, like file reads and
off-thread parses. A lot of those things wind up split up into
multiple operations, and the event loop is so saturated during
startup if they miss a chance to run, they often wind up running
after first paint. If we do something like spin the event loop
to make sure they run in time, extra things run before paint.
So perhaps it would be a fairly simple problem if we ensured
that everything that runs during startup explicitly defers
things that don't need to run before paint. But at this point,
it's so hard to get a hold on what's being scheduled and why
that I don't even know where to start.
On Tue, Aug 8, 2017 at 5:42 PM, Kris Maglione <kmagli...@mozilla.com> wrote:
One of my biggest frustrations in profiling startup performance has been
the fact that exactly which code runs during before or after first paint
changes based on arbitrary timing factors. If I make a 5ms improvement to
one section of code, a 100ms chunk of code winds up running after first
paint rather than before. If I make a 5ms improvement to another section of
code, a 150ms chunk of code winds up running *before* first paint rather
than after. This also shows up in the ts_paint timings on talos, where we
have a fairly consistent cluster of high times, a fairly consistent cluster
of low times, and very little in-between.
Presumably, if we're OK with these chunks *ever* running after first
paint, then they should always run after first paint. And vice versa.
I've made various attempts to get a handle on this, but never with much
success. The last time, I got as far as fixing the broken TaskTracer build
before I finally gave up trying to find a useful way to analyze the data.
What I'd really like is a handle on what tasks are run, when, who schedule
them (and when), and what code they run.
After that, I'd ideally like to find a way to run async tasks during
startup so that I'm guaranteed which parts run before first paint and which
run after.
Has anyone else made any progress on this front? Are there any other tools
that I'm overlooking? Is there a sensible path forward?
Thanks.
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