1 second lag when opening URLs from the command line

[Chris West]

When you, or another application, attempts to open a URL in Chromium, there is a very perceptible delay: over 1 second on my modern i7/ssds/>16gb ram desktop.

e.g.

chromium-browser http://google.com

or:

xdg-open http://google.com

This is annoying. It doesn't happen with Chrome Stable Channel, nor with Debian's Chromium packaging. This has become significantly worse since Chromium 45.

--

I had a go at diagnosing this on the Chrome upstream bug tracker: https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=569437

In summary: Chromium in Ubuntu is built with dynamic linking, which is apparently a big surprise to the Chromium people, as it is known to cause issues. Specifically, just loading libraries (like `ldd -r`) takes 900ms+, instead of the <100ms expected. This doesn't show up well in Chrome tracing, as it has to happen before Chrome tracing can start.

chrome-stable:
% time ldd -r /opt/google/chrome/chrome | wc -l
81

0.02s user 0.01s system 84% cpu 0.038 total

chromium-browser from Ubuntu:
% time ldd -r /usr/lib/chromium-browser/chromium-browser | wc -l
201

0.89s user 0.01s system 99% cpu 0.909 total

The choice to go shared_library is only in Ubuntu (i.e. not Debian). The debian/rules file in the package contains:

147 # Do this for every architecture. More than 4GB of memory is too much to expect
148 # of builders.
149 COMPONENT_SHARED_LIB_BUILD := 1
150
151 ifeq (1,$(COMPONENT_SHARED_LIB_BUILD))
152 BROWSER_GYP_DEFINES += component=shared_library
153 FFMPEG_GYP_DEFINES += component=shared_library
154 endif

--

Please remove this customisation and Make opening links Great Again.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 15.10
Package: chromium-browser 47.0.2526.73-0ubuntu0.15.10.1.1215
Uname: Linux 4.3.0-040300-generic x86_64
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia
ApportVersion: 2.19.1-0ubuntu5
Architecture: amd64
Date: Thu Dec 31 15:25:30 2015
Desktop-Session:
 'xsession'
 '/etc/xdg/xdg-xsession:/etc/xdg/xdg-xsession:/etc/xdg'
 '/usr/share/xsession:/usr/share/xsession:/usr/local/share/:/usr/share/'
DetectedPlugins:

Env:
 'None'
 'None'
InstalledPlugins:
 /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins:
   => libgnome-shell-browser-plugin.so
         (size: 18888 bytes, mtime: Mon Oct 19 13:43:03 2015)
Load-Avg-1min: 0.55
Load-Processes-Running-Percent: 0.1%
MachineType: System manufacturer System Product Name
ProcKernelCmdLine: BOOT_IMAGE=/vmlinuz-4.3.0-040300-generic root=UUID=672510b8-afb9-425f-a58d-bd325f7c987a ro rootflags=subvol=@
SourcePackage: chromium-browser
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to wily on 2015-08-28 (124 days ago)
dmi.bios.date: 12/19/2012
dmi.bios.vendor: American Megatrends Inc.
dmi.bios.version: 1805
dmi.board.asset.tag: To be filled by O.E.M.
dmi.board.name: P8Z77-V
dmi.board.vendor: ASUSTeK COMPUTER INC.
dmi.board.version: Rev 1.xx
dmi.chassis.asset.tag: Asset-1234567890
dmi.chassis.type: 3
dmi.chassis.vendor: Chassis Manufacture
dmi.chassis.version: Chassis Version
dmi.modalias: dmi:bvnAmericanMegatrendsInc.:bvr1805:bd12/19/2012:svnSystemmanufacturer:pnSystemProductName:pvrSystemVersion:rvnASUSTeKCOMPUTERINC.:rnP8Z77-V:rvrRev1.xx:cvnChassisManufacture:ct3:cvrChassisVersion:
dmi.product.name: System Product Name
dmi.product.version: System Version
dmi.sys.vendor: System manufacturer
gconf-keys: /desktop/gnome/applications/browser/exec = b'firefox\n'/desktop/gnome/url-handlers/https/command = b'sensible-browser %s\n'/desktop/gnome/url-handlers/https/enabled = b'true\n'/desktop/gnome/url-handlers/http/command = b'sensible-browser %s\n'/desktop/gnome/url-handlers/http/enabled = b'true\n'/desktop/gnome/session/required_components/windowmanager = b''/apps/metacity/general/compositing_manager = b''/desktop/gnome/interface/icon_theme = b'gnome\n'/desktop/gnome/interface/gtk_theme = b'Clearlooks\n'
modified.conffile..etc.chromium.browser.default: [modified]
modified.conffile..etc.default.chromium.browser: [deleted]
mtime.conffile..etc.chromium.browser.default: 2015-03-08T12:05:01.795251

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Jarno Suni (jarnos)]

Here the delay is 6 seconds. Hardware:
Intel(R) Core(TM)2 CPU T6600 @ 2.20GHz
/SSD/4GB

[Jarno Suni (jarnos)]

Is there the lag even if you do open the browser without URL?

[Jarno Suni (jarnos)]

Possible duplicate: Bug #1537878

[Olivier Tilloy (osomon)]

Starting with chromium-browser 61, packages are built with is_component_build=false, so the issue should be solved.