5 ms·

Mozilla’s automated builds of Firefox for Windows, macOS, Linux, and Android are all cross-compiled on Linux VMs. Cross-compiling is faster and cheaper, especia

Mozilla’s automated builds of Firefox for Windows, macOS, Linux, and Android are all cross-compiled on Linux VMs. Cross-compiling is faster and cheaper, especially because Windows’ file I/O and process launching is so slow.

behnamoh 4y ago
> Windows’ file I/O and process launching is so slow. It's not Windows' fault, rather it's NTFS.
- pxc 4y ago
  There's some documentation on this in some WSL issues on GitHub, but it's not just NTFS. It's stuff like the broader filesystem architecture's inclusion of pluggable 'filters' (kinda neat, but each layer of them incurs a performance cost) or the way commands on other operating systems depend on caches for certain syscalls that Windows doesn't keep, or keep anything equivalent to. Too tired to go find them atm
  - espenwa 4y ago
    This one? I remember it as an earnest description of the difficulties the WSL team had with the speed of NTFS - and I think it was one of the reasons for the switch to virtualisation in WSL2. <https://github.com/Microsoft/WSL/issues/873#issuecomment-425272829 https://github.com/Microsoft/WSL/issues/873#issuecomment-425...>
    - pxc 4y ago
      Yeah, that's the GitHub comment, thank you! My takeaway from that comment is that there are some important performances issues that apply generally to all filesystems on Windows. Maybe we can partially test whether that's the case by playing with WSL1 on ReFS, ExFAT (if that's even supported, with its limited permissions support, or ZFS, once OpenZFS on Windows stabilizes a bit.
- rurban 4y ago
  Rather it's their baroque ACL permission system, which is not able to cache inherited perms.
  - forgotpwd16 4y ago
    The ACL permission system is in NTFS. For example FAT32 doesn't have it.
    - rurban 4y ago
      Yes, but if you turn off inheritance perf goes up 10x. It's a policy, not the NTFS driver itself.
      - forgotpwd16 4y ago
        Can you provide links providing more info for those statements?
        rurban 4y ago
        no, just try it out. all my cygwin build rules contained turning off inherited perms to be able to compile bigger systems under an hour. e g. https://github.com/rurban/cygwin-rurban/blob/master/release/perl/build_common#L110 https://github.com/rurban/cygwin-rurban/blob/master/release/...
- fritigern 4y ago
  NTFS is Windows' fault.
- dblohm7 4y ago
  https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qbKGw8MQ0i8 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qbKGw8MQ0i8

behnamoh 4y ago

> Windows’ file I/O and process launching is so slow. It's not Windows' fault, rather it's NTFS.

pxc 4y ago
There's some documentation on this in some WSL issues on GitHub, but it's not just NTFS. It's stuff like the broader filesystem architecture's inclusion of pluggable 'filters' (kinda neat, but each layer of them incurs a performance cost) or the way commands on other operating systems depend on caches for certain syscalls that Windows doesn't keep, or keep anything equivalent to. Too tired to go find them atm
- espenwa 4y ago
  This one? I remember it as an earnest description of the difficulties the WSL team had with the speed of NTFS - and I think it was one of the reasons for the switch to virtualisation in WSL2. <https://github.com/Microsoft/WSL/issues/873#issuecomment-425272829 https://github.com/Microsoft/WSL/issues/873#issuecomment-425...>
  - pxc 4y ago
    Yeah, that's the GitHub comment, thank you! My takeaway from that comment is that there are some important performances issues that apply generally to all filesystems on Windows. Maybe we can partially test whether that's the case by playing with WSL1 on ReFS, ExFAT (if that's even supported, with its limited permissions support, or ZFS, once OpenZFS on Windows stabilizes a bit.
rurban 4y ago
Rather it's their baroque ACL permission system, which is not able to cache inherited perms.
- forgotpwd16 4y ago
  The ACL permission system is in NTFS. For example FAT32 doesn't have it.
  - rurban 4y ago
    Yes, but if you turn off inheritance perf goes up 10x. It's a policy, not the NTFS driver itself.
    - forgotpwd16 4y ago
      Can you provide links providing more info for those statements?
      - rurban 4y ago
        no, just try it out. all my cygwin build rules contained turning off inherited perms to be able to compile bigger systems under an hour. e g. https://github.com/rurban/cygwin-rurban/blob/master/release/perl/build_common#L110 https://github.com/rurban/cygwin-rurban/blob/master/release/...
fritigern 4y ago
NTFS is Windows' fault.
dblohm7 4y ago
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qbKGw8MQ0i8 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qbKGw8MQ0i8