Optimize the speed of starting cutefish apps.
Debian/Ubuntu Dependencies:
sudo apt install cmake qtbase5-dev qtdeclarative5-dev qtquickcontrols2-5-dev libsystemd-dev libcap-dev libdbus-1-devmkdir build
cd build
cmake -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX:PATH=/usr ..
make
sudo make installApplauncherd is a daemon that helps to launch applications faster by preloading dynamically linked libraries and caching stuff. It also saves memory, because all launched applications share certain resources.
Applauncherd also provides support for fast single instance launches.
Some technical details are explained below.
Install applauncherd-doc for the Doxygen-based user documentation. See INSTALL on how to build applauncherd and the documentation.
Booster daemons (written using the provided library) are started as part of the user session. The booster is responsible for forking the will-be-application before knowing which application is going to be launched next. There can be different kinds of boosters optimized for different kinds of applications, e.g. Qt or QML.
In the current architecture boosters are implemented as seperate processes, using the provided support library. Each booster process waits for launch commands.
The user uses the launcher always through a special invoker program. The invoker (/usr/bin/invoker) tells booster process to load an application binary via a socket connection.
The application to be launched via applauncherd should be compiled as a shared library or a position independent executable (-pie) and it should always export main(). There's also a "booster" for all applications. In that case exec() is used.
Loading the binary is done with dlopen(), and therefore the application needs to be compiled and linked as a shared library or a position independent executable. The booster process also sets the environment variables. Finally, it finds the main function in the application binary with dlsym() and calls the main() with the command line arguments given by the invoker.
Booster processes do some initializations that cannot be shared among other processes and therefore have to be done after forking. This allows, for instance, instantiating a application before knowing the name of the application. Then the booster process waits for a connection from the invoker with the information about which application should be launched.
People who have contributed to mapplauncherd:
Robin Burchell John Brooks Thomas Perl
People who have contributed to meegotouch-applauncherd:
Olli Leppänen Jussi Lind Juha Lintula Pertti Kellomäki Antti Kervinen Nimika Keshri Alexey Shilov Oskari Timperi
Some parts of the code is based on the maemo-launcher by:
Guillem Jover Michael Natterer
This project has been licensed by LGPL-2.1.