[UPHPU] Why is require() slow?

[Joseph Scott]

On Jan 9, 2008, at 4:39 PM, Richard K Miller wrote:

> What would make require() slow? I installed APD[1] to profile a  
> slow running WordPress blog, and it said the 34 calls to require()  
> are taking 10.76 seconds to execute! Something must be wrong with  
> my server. This is a stock installation of WordPress on FreeBSD and  
> I have only one folder in my include_path.



10 seconds is way too long.  The front page of my WordPress blog  
(also on FreeBSD, yeah!) takes just over 1.1 seconds, with a single  
post page with 9 comments taking less than 0.7 seconds.  I'm also  
using Donncha's WP Super Cache plugin http://wordpress.org/extend/ 
plugins/wp-super-cache/ which helps.  I've also got APC http:// 
pecl.php.net/package/APC running to reduce the parse/compile over  
head in PHP.

My gut instinct on really slow loading pages like this is that there  
they have large content files (huge images, video embeds, etc.), but  
if your profiler indicates that it is the require() that is killing  
the performance I'm inclined to think it isn't a content issue.

I'd look at the performance of a simple hello world PHP page and see  
what absolute lowest time your server push out a PHP file.  From  
there add a simple require() and keep building it up until you can  
see a trend on where the performance is getting killed.

--
Joseph Scott
http://joseph.randomnetworks.com/