Re: Memory consumption and virtual machines

[Philip Van Hoof <spam pvanhoof be>]

On Tue, 2006-07-18 at 09:30 -0600, Veerapuram Varadhan wrote:
 
> > Take for example Evolution. Using ONE WEEK of hacking, I managed to
> > reduce its memory footprint with at least 40 MB of ram.  
> 
> I don't know how many times I need to repeat, because, this keeps coming
> in lot different threads and I see no progress to make the patch
> complete. 

I'm waiting for the decision (yours) of making this optional using a
compilation flag or at run-time.

> Yes, I agree, the patch does reduce *STARTUP-MEMORY-FOOT
> PRINT* of Evolution as mentioned by Federico in his blog, however, it is
> *as of now* just-a-hack that the Evolution team cannot take it *as is*.

> Phillip, as you keep saying the patch needs rework before considering
> upstream, when are we going to get it?  Will the final-patch addresses
> all the concerns raised by me and Fejj?  Guess, you are aware of the
> GNOME release cycle and API freeze dates.

It wouldn't be a good idea to glue this patch to an API freeze or GNOME
release cycle as it needs extensive testing that shouldn't be bound by
such milestones, but should be bound by test results.

The test results have to be done on installations that I don't own. I
cannot perform these tests with just my own equipment. I don't have
customers that run Evolution on a NFS shared $HOME or run Evolution 4300
times on an application server.

I guess this is why you wanted it to be optional. I'm still waiting for
your decision of that "optionality" being at compile time or at run
time.

Note that at run time means that more errors and bugs are possible
(especially when switching the implementation happens).

Also note that after a full week of night-hacking on this patch, you
have to remember that I'm not getting paid to do this. That I have a
daytime job and a girlfriend.



-- 
Philip Van Hoof, software developer at x-tend 
home: me at pvanhoof dot be 
gnome: pvanhoof at gnome dot org 
work: vanhoof at x-tend dot be 
http://www.pvanhoof.be - http://www.x-tend.be