Profiling ClickOnce *startup* time.

Question

I am trying to optimize startup time of one of an internal tool at my company.

It however, is deployed via ClickOnce and utilized IsolatedStorage.

I am using JetBrains dotTrace 3.1 to profile it but then it would not be able to start the application due to dependency on IsolatedStorage and ApplicationDeployment which requires that the application be run in ClickOnce context.

I am aware that I can use manual StopWatch-ing to profile everything. But I thought that I'd ask here first since I am not a regular profiler nor a performance freak. If there's a tool or tips that'd save me time then I'd love to know.

Is there a profiling tool that fully supports ClickOnce?

Or any suggestions on profiling ClickOnce startup time with JetBrains dotTrace?

Answer 1

I would create a specific version your application for profiling that can be run without ClickOnce. Hopefully, it wouldn't be too difficult to remove the isolated storage access and just return some dummy values.

I'm not sure you could do it via ClickOnce even if you didn't have the isolated storage issue. I haven't used dotTrace but I assume it needs .pdb files to profile your code. I'd be surprised if you were deploying the .pdb files with your app.

Answer 2

You can attach to windows explorer using DotTrace 3.1. Do following steps:

1. Run DotTrace
2. Run task manager and kill explorer
3. File-> Profile application -> Executable path: explorer -> click Start Application
4. Run your click once application

That's all :)