Sometimes Slingshot is slow to show up, even while already running.
It seems that Slingshot reads some files every time it's invoked; if the files are cached, all is fine. If they are not cached, it reads them from disk which takes a long time.
This can be reproduced by dropping the page cache by executing "echo 1 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches" in a root shell and then opening an already running Slingshot instance.
ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 12.04
Package: slingshot-launcher 0.6+r264-0+pkg12~precise1 [origin: LP-PPA-elementary-os-daily]
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.2.0-27.43-generic 3.2.21
Uname: Linux 3.2.0-27-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.0.1-0ubuntu12
Architecture: amd64
CrashDB: slingshot_launcher
Date: Thu Aug 30 12:22:06 2012
ExecutablePath: /usr/bin/slingshot-launcher
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 12.04 LTS "Precise Pangolin" - Alpha amd64 (20120303)
ProcEnviron:
PATH=(custom, no user)
LANG=ru_RU.UTF-8
SHELL=/usr/bin/fish
SourcePackage: slingshot-launcher
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)
XsessionErrors:
(gnome-settings-daemon:2500): libwacom-WARNING **: Tablet 'usb:056a:0015' has no buttons defined, do something!
(gnome-settings-daemon:2500): libwacom-WARNING **: Tablet 'usb:056a:0014' has no buttons defined, do something!
(gnome-settings-daemon:2500): libwacom-WARNING **: Tablet 'usb:056a:0013' has no buttons defined, do something!
gnome-session[2436]: WARNING: Failed to start app: Unable to start application: Не удалось выполнить процесс-потомок «postler» (Нет такого файла или каталога)
Strace of file calls shows a lot of stat() which should not be issued on opening Slingshot. Inotify watches should be used instead of polling all those files every time Slingshot is opened.