If Gforth is used for CGI scripts or in shell scripts, its startup
speed may become a problem. On a 3GHz Core 2 Duo E8400 under 64-bit
Linux 2.6.27.8 with libc-2.7, gforth-fast -e bye takes 13.1ms
user and 1.2ms system time (gforth -e bye is faster on startup
with about 3.4ms user time and 1.2ms system time, because it subsumes
some of the options discussed below).
If startup speed is a problem, you may consider the following ways to improve it; or you may consider ways to reduce the number of startups (for example, by using Fast-CGI). Note that the first steps below improve the startup time at the cost of run-time (including compile-time), so whether they are profitable depends on the balance of these times in your application.
An easy step that influences Gforth startup speed is the use of a number of options that increase run-time, but decrease image-loading time.
The first of these that you should try is --ss-number=0
--ss-states=1 because this option buys relatively little run-time
speedup and costs quite a bit of time at startup. gforth-fast
--ss-number=0 --ss-states=1 -e bye takes about 2.8ms user and 1.5ms
system time.
The next option is --no-dynamic which has a substantial impact
on run-time (about a factor of 2-4 on several platforms), but still
makes startup speed a little faster: gforth-fast --ss-number=0
--ss-states=1 --no-dynamic -e bye consumes about 2.6ms user and 1.2ms
system time.
If the script you want to execute contains a significant amount of code, it may be profitable to compile it into the image to avoid the cost of compiling it at startup time.