The time it takes to retrace a crash has increased somewhat, on the Ubuntu Error Tracker, with the rollout of apport version 2854.
See https://errors.ubuntu.com/api/1.0/retracers-average-processing-time/?limit=32767&format=json for data, particularly before and after 9/4/2014 when the retracers switched to revision 2854 of apport.
I've tracked this down to the change in r2849 (https://bazaar.launchpad.net/~apport-hackers/apport/trunk/revision/2849) of apport. It used to be that all libraries were considered up to date if the file for them existed in the sandbox, but now version tracking is used. However, because that is used we now have to call apport.packaging.get_file_package() for every shared library, which the function indicates is very expensive.
Perhaps we could include the library file in packages.txt along with the package name and version, thereby reducing the number of times we need to call get_file_package.
Additionally, I realized we are now (as of r2758) checking three more Contents.gz files (-updates, -security, -proposed) in apport.packaging._search_contents() which probably also had a negative impact on the time to retrace. Its hard to confirm this though since we switched cassandra databases and average processing time data is not available for January of 2014.
I also did some manual testing of apport-retrace with the _usr_bin_ gnome-calculato r.2001. crash from the apport- test-crashes. All times are in minutes : seconds.
Using apport version 2830 with no cache the retrace took approximately 2:32.
Using apport version 2830 with a cache the retrace took 0:18.
Using apport version 2854 with no cache the retrace took approximately 2:21.
Using apport version 2854 with a cache the retrace took 1:18.