Nautilus search in gnome-shell performance regression

[Michael Gratton]

Under 19.10, the Nautilus search provider returned near-instant results when searching in GNOME shell's activities, for both standard top-level folders like "Downloads", but also when returning results for files and directories deeper down.

Under 20.04, it takes ~10 seconds to start showing results, even when just searching for Downloads. It's a bit faster for a warm search, but not by much. There is no difference if Nautilus is already running in the background or not. Performing a type-to-find in a Nautilus window proper is as as instantaneous as the shell search was in 19.10.

This is a substantial usability regression - I use the feature constantly.

The only thing printed in the logs when performing a search is:

> May 04 12:40:39 blanchefort nautilus[232948]: Source ID 10873 was not found when attempting to remove it

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 20.04
Package: nautilus 1:3.36.1.1-1ubuntu2
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 5.4.0-28.32-generic 5.4.30
Uname: Linux 5.4.0-28-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.20.11-0ubuntu27
Architecture: amd64
CasperMD5CheckResult: skip
CurrentDesktop: GNOME
Date: Mon May 4 12:28:30 2020
InstallationDate: Installed on 2018-08-13 (629 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 18.04.1 LTS "Bionic Beaver" - Release amd64 (20180725)
SourcePackage: nautilus
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to focal on 2020-03-07 (57 days ago)
usr_lib_nautilus:

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

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

[Fernando (fmuro)]

This is probably related to the following bug:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/nautilus/+bug/1874972

File search in overview mode is now always done full-text. I think that the intended behavior is doing it exclusively by file name in overview and optionally in nautilus. Please, confirm you're also affected by this other bug and mark it there to attract attention.

[Michael Gratton (mjog)]

> This is probably related to the following bug:
>
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/nautilus/+bug/1874972
>
> File search in overview mode is now always done full-text.

I don't know if that is is related or not, since here doing a full-text search in Nautilus for "Downloads" is just as fast as doing a filename-only search. It's only in the shell search provider that there is the 10s delay.

FWIW, I also see full-text search results in the shell search provider, but I don't consider that a bug. :)