Very slow launch time with XULRunner caused by profiles

Question

I have an application that generates temporary XULRunner apps by building a skeleton application folder structure, and then launching it with:

xulrunner -app /path/to/temporary/application.ini

This all works, but it takes an unacceptable amount of time for the application to actually load. I have isolated the time-sink to xulrunner generating/working with profile information.

I have tried adding -profile /path/to/static/folder and -profile /path/to/temporary/folder but each still has a very long delay (30 - 60 seconds, on a fast computer). I have also added -no-remote but with no effect.

When the application launches, I can watch the profile folder slowly fill with files, and once all the files are there, the gui comes up fairly quickly. Unfortunately this time does not seem to disappear when using a static folder for the profiles (it might be regenerating some of the files?).

So my question is, is it possible to completely disable xulrunner's profile management? Is there anything else I could do to increase the loading speed?

Harrold

30-60 seconds is definitely not the normal case. Initializing a new profile takes a few seconds at most. I'm not really sure what could cause such large delays in your case but maybe you can profile with the debug symbols (see developer.mozilla.org/en/Using_the_Mozilla_symbol_server) and find out which particular code parts are causing the delay. – Ambivalence

the safe modes that ignore everything? – Bushed

Answer 1

The location of the profile can slow it down if it's in a subdirectory of the /roaming path in Windows. Check whether the XULRunner profile and cache data are in a local directory or on a network.

A mozillazine article discusses how to find and modify this setting, and the Profile Manager provides utilities to create and delete profiles.

Tullis

Answer 2

Are you using VirtualBox or other VM? I had a similar problem with extensions inside VirtualBox environment (guest OS was Windows XP). My extension source was located in a directory mounted from a shared host folder. That caused startup lags very similar to yours.

Marquittamarr