Improving Clojure startup time with -Xbootclasspath

[Alex Osborne]

We were discussing Clojure startup time (in the context of Leiningen)
and Phil Hagelberg asked some JRuby people about startup time. They
suggested using -Xbootclasspath.

Check this out:

% time (echo | java -client -cp clojure.jar clojure.main)
0.84s user 0.04s system 96% cpu 0.908 total

% time (echo | java -client -Xbootclasspath/a:clojure.jar clojure.main)
0.42s user 0.04s system 106% cpu 0.431 total

For the server VM:

% time (echo | java -server -cp clojure.jar clojure.main)
1.07s user 0.06s system 113% cpu 0.995 total

% time (echo | java -server -Xbootclasspath/a:clojure.jar clojure.main)
0.56s user 0.06s system 109% cpu 0.562 total

For reference:

% java -version
java version "1.6.0_16"
Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.6.0_16-b01)
Java HotSpot(TM) Server VM (build 14.2-b01, mixed mode)

Apparently on Dan Larkin's PC startup time went from a terrible 5.5s to
a more bearable 1.9s.

Looks like it's problematic to put Clojure libs in the bootclasspath
though. I get an NPE:

Caused by: java.lang.NullPointerException
at clojure.lang.RT.load(RT.java:377)
at clojure.lang.RT.load(RT.java:371)

Which is this line from RT.java:
URL classURL = baseLoader().getResource(classfile);

(clojure.lang.RT/baseLoader) isn't null, so I'm not sure what the deal
is with that unless the class loading runs in a different thread where
it is null or something. But if you just put the Clojure jar itself in
-Xbootclasspath and the rest of your libs as normal -cp you still get a
nice fast start. :-)

Charles Nutter has a nice list of JVM flags here:

http://blog.headius.com/2009/01/my-favorite-hotspot-jvm-flags.html

I don't get much of a benefit out of -XShare on my system but it might
be worth trying as well.

[Dmitry Ulanov]

Very interesting tip! Also, like vimclojure, you can run nailgun (http://martiansoftware.com/nailgun/background.html) locally or on your server via ssh.

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[Meikel Brandmeyer]

Hi,

On Nov 23, 9:57 am, Dmitry Ulanov <dula...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Very interesting tip! Also, like vimclojure, you can run nailgun (http://martiansoftware.com/nailgun/background.html) locally or on your
> server via ssh.

I'd also like to mention clj-server: http://github.com/Neronus/clj-server.

Sincerely
Meikel

[Armando Blancas]

I added the contrib lib expecting it to fail but it worked, and loaded
(in half the usual time) some code from the user.clj as well:

>java -Xbootclasspath/a:clojure\clojure.jar;clojure-contrib\clojure-contrib.jar clojure.main
Clojure 1.1.0-alpha-SNAPSHOT
user=>

I had been reading in this paper: http://www.tedneward.com/files/Papers/BootClasspath/BootClasspath.pdf
about the case below and how that could explain the NPE, but when I
added the lib to see it, the thing worked.

public class NewObjectLoader {
public static void main (String args[]) {
NewObject no = new NewObject();
System.out.println(
no.getClass().getName() + " was loaded by " +
no.getClass().getClassLoader());
}
}
Sure enough, the NewObject class is not only found at compile-time and
runtime, but it prints
"NewObject was loaded by null", indicating it owes its existence to
the bootstrap ClassLoader.

Running on Vista
>java -version
java version "1.6.0_13"
Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.6.0_13-b03)
Java HotSpot(TM) Client VM (build 11.3-b02, mixed mode, sharing)