Re: Anti-bloat side project

[Szabolcs Nagy <nsz@port70.net>]

* Rich Felker <dalias@aerifal.cx> [2011-06-27 13:08:06 -0400]:
> As an example it takes Python nearly 600 syscalls just to run a hello
> world program, compared to about 40 for perl or bash and 20 for ash
> (and of course about 3 for musl-linked C using stdio). Much of this
> was spent searching nonsensical pathnames for config files and shared

i get different numbers on my (ubuntu) system

nsz@tpx:~$ strace python -c '' 2>&1 |wc -l
670
nsz@tpx:~$ strace perl -e '' 2>&1 |wc -l
176
nsz@tpx:~$ strace sh -c '' 2>&1 |wc -l
42
nsz@tpx:~$ strace bash -c '' 2>&1 |wc -l
186
nsz@tpx:~$ strace awk '' 2>&1 |wc -l
95
nsz@tpx:~$ strace mawk '' 2>&1 |wc -l
39
nsz@tpx:~$ strace lua -e '' 2>&1 |wc -l
67
nsz@tpx:~$ strace bc </dev/null 2>&1 |wc -l
60
nsz@tpx:~$ strace sed '' </dev/null 2>&1 |wc -l
110
nsz@tpx:~$ strace cat </dev/null 2>&1 |wc -l
111
nsz@tpx:~$ strace dd </dev/null 2>&1 |wc -l
162
nsz@tpx:~$ strace grep . </dev/null 2>&1 |wc -l
127
nsz@tpx:~$ strace /bin/true 2>&1 |wc -l
107

without locale crap

nsz@tpx:~$ export LC_ALL=C
nsz@tpx:~$ strace python -c '' 2>&1 |wc -l
652
nsz@tpx:~$ strace perl -e '' 2>&1 |wc -l
99
nsz@tpx:~$ strace sh -c '' 2>&1 |wc -l
42
nsz@tpx:~$ strace bash -c '' 2>&1 |wc -l
101
nsz@tpx:~$ strace awk '' 2>&1 |wc -l
55
nsz@tpx:~$ strace mawk '' 2>&1 |wc -l
39
nsz@tpx:~$ strace lua -e '' 2>&1 |wc -l
67
nsz@tpx:~$ strace bc </dev/null 2>&1 |wc -l
60
nsz@tpx:~$ strace sed '' </dev/null 2>&1 |wc -l
35
nsz@tpx:~$ strace cat </dev/null 2>&1 |wc -l
36
nsz@tpx:~$ strace dd </dev/null 2>&1 |wc -l
74
nsz@tpx:~$ strace grep . </dev/null 2>&1 |wc -l
40
nsz@tpx:~$ strace /bin/true 2>&1 |wc -l
32


> Anyway my idea for a side project to benefit the whole Linux community
> (not just musl users) is to document and analyze the causes of startup
> bloat/syscall bloat (which leads to bad performance, especially in
> "script"-type programs that run many times) and memory bloat in some
> core components that are used on most modern Linux-based systems:
> 
> - Python
> - Perl
> - Glib
> - GTK
> - ncurses
> - etc.
> 
> and then sending reports (and possible fix ideas) to the upstream
> maintainers. This is not something I plan to do myself (I'd rather
> spend time improving musl) but I want to propose it as a way for
> members of the community to contribute to positive anti-bloat work
> that benefits a large number of users, as opposed to the alternative
> of just boycotting software that "sucks" for bloat reasons. :-)

nice
imho these issues are well known, ppl just don't care enough

i remember when the first google summer of codes was announced
one of the first python project idea was to do something
about the number of syscalls at startup
http://wiki.python.org/moin/CodingProjectIdeas/PythonCore

it did not improve much since then, even in python3 ppl are
complaining about the syscalls but devs say it does not matter
http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2011-January/107771.html
http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2011-January/107789.html