115960 - Performance: dlls should use different base addresses

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(SeaMonkey :: UI Design, defect)

Description

[av (gone)]

Not sure about component. This is just a thought on possible reducing start up 
time, and may not even be a bug.

I noticed that all our dlls are compiled with the default base memory address 
which is 10000000. This means that when the application is being launched the OS 
needs to relocate all of them which obviously takes time.

I do not know how to fix this or even if this is possible at all. Just in case 
this is possible and somebody knows how to do it.

Comment 1

[John Morrison]

waterson (I think) has already looked into rebasing dlls. I'm not sure what the 
outcome of that was.

Comment 2

[Warner Young]

I can't think of any reason not to do this, other than that it needs changes to
the make files.  Rebasing DLLs should never slow down loading, and might speed
things up.

Comment 3

[av (gone)]

Is rebasing normally done at compilation stage? In this case it might get rather 
complicated. I think there should be utilities allowing to rebase already built 
dll, which I think is more or less what we want.

Comment 4

[Warner Young]

MS has a utility somewhere that can let you rebase afterwards, or it can be done
during the linking stage.  Typically (I think), you'd want to assign a roughly
unique base address to each DLL, and make that part of the build procedure if
possible.  I'd have to dig it up if needed, but I think there's an old Windows
Dev Journal that suggested a specific scheme for doing this, based on the name
of the DLL, to try to avoid any further collisions.

Comment 5

[Chris Waterson]

AFAIK, We do rebase release bits (i.e., set BUILD_OFFICIAL=1). See

  <http://lxr.mozilla.org/seamonkey/source/makefile.win#144>

I'll let leaf and/or dveditz confirm. Probably can mark this bug WORKSFORME.

Comment 6

[Daniel Veditz [:dveditz]]

We do rebase .dll's in release builds (set MOZILLA_OFFICIAL=1)