Hello,
I recently updated from RT 5.12-7 to 5.12-26. Because startup lasted much longer than usual, I reverted to 5.12-7.
Today I tried 5.12-30 which is also super slow. Image processing takes about twice as long as before. Renaming the cache directory also did not help.
Might this be a general error or is it my old Intel Xeon CPU?
Forgot to mention the OS: Win10 64 bit
There are two other dev versions between those. Maybe you can try them to see which version it started being slow?
RawTherapee_dev_5.12-8-g9f9b6ede8: Wavelet levels - crash with Highlight threshold in residual image (#7… · RawTherapee/RawTherapee@9f9b6ed · GitHub
RawTherapee_dev_5.12-12-g8ad934430: Merge pull request #7266 from Lawrence37/embedded-xmp-color-label · RawTherapee/RawTherapee@8ad9344 · GitHub
Also make sure you didn’t accidentally download the debug versions.
Thank you @Lawrence37 !
Will try tomorrow
Version 5.12-8 runs at normal speed, 5.12-12 is slow.
During startup the program uses one CPU core by 100%
Try this one. I’ve removed the change introduced in 5.12-12. This will tell us if it’s a problem with the code or something in the build process.
Unfortunately, this build is just as slow as version 12.
This evening I can try on another hardware to make sure it isn’t an incompatibility issue with my old computer
I think, I am absolutely not a specialist in compilation, nor in Github, msys2, etc. that this is a problem related to a recent update of Msys/mingw64…
I make updates via ‘pacman -Syu’, about every 3 weeks or 1 month. I did the last one a few days ago and since then, whatever the code (I tried on a code from 6 months ago - gamutcompress) when compiling, there is a significant slowdown when launching - then it seems pretty much the same (I haven’t checked with measurements).
So, to be verified by other users, but it seems that a ‘package’ update is responsible - which one - I have no idea.
@Lawrence37 , @jdc thanks for your time!
I just started build -30 on a newer system running on Win11. There it showed the same behaviour
I will have a look into MSYS2 and see what changed.
I can confirm the different startup times. I use dev versions (zip) for Win64 on my old Windows 10 machine (Intel i7-5600U). I just downloaded RawTherapee_dev_5.12-102. The startup time for this version is 45 sec, while the startup with 5.12-1 is 15 sec. This just FYI, I can live with the -1 version very well and wait for approvement…
I think the later compiles are also slower in processing (*). The latest one that works fine on my computer is 5.12-8.
When I try the latest dev versions on a VirtualBoxed Linux Mint, everything is fine by the way.
(*) at least on my old computer
Hi @Sunhillow, could you try this one?
I downgraded one of the dependencies which resolved the long startup time for me.
Hi @Lawrence37 , this one starts at least as fast as 5.12-8 and older.
Thanks a lot! Just saw your investigation on github. Just like searching a needle in a haystack … and if I understand it correctly a library for text rendering is to blame 
That’s right! Thanks for confirming the downgrade resolved the issue. Let’s hope the Pango people can figure out how to fix it. Sooner or later, it will become hard for us (RawTherapee) to keep using the same older version of Pango. I will follow the developments closely on their bug tracker (Possible performance issue under windows (#864) · Issues · GNOME / pango · GitLab).
Awesome. This will help also art, which is affected by the same issue. Thanks a lot!
I confirm, all works fine now 
(Performance degredation of Windows build · Issue #7486 · RawTherapee/RawTherapee · GitHub)
see my comments in issue
Jacques
One more thing I have observed on my windows 11, RT development version 5.12.102 takes about 20s to start if started from installation directory by clicking exe file whereas starting from start menu (shortcut) it takes about 60s. No such difference is observed in RT 5.12 release version.
I would recommend to recreate the start menu entry…