Improve startup time on Windows?

[jonmmorgan]

I was interested in the claims that FF 4.0 had a patch to preload xul.dll and js.dll, which can cut a couple of seconds off startup time (in their case, about half the time). This is discussed at https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=627591#c0.

As I understand it (from having hacked the core code a bit, including how the JS library is loaded), wxWebConnect is a glue library which loads all of the dependent DLLs up front, then loads xpcom.dll and imports the XPCOM functions and sets up XPCOM from there. Would there be any problems in adding a change like this if it were shown to improve startup time? Is it likely to break anything? [I'm assuming the change would speed up any version of XULRunner, not just the XR2 in FF4].

[Ben]

Sure. That definitely sounds like a fun project. Assuming it's not XR2-specific. I'd be interested in seeing profiling results regarding the delta improvement in time.

Thanks for your idea.