I've got this 3.7 image that has been through quite a lot. It is the one where I hit the wall on changes file size. Eventually getting changes condensed, I applied the patch pointed to by Tim for slower growing changes files.

Since this time, I am finding all operations involving accessing source code, browsing, compiling, generating MC snapshots, are now taking progressively longer periods of time. On average, it takes 3-5 seconds for a bit of source code to pop into the browser and MC has become pretty much unusable.

A MC snapshot operation message tally is attached as you can see, most time is spent in "primitives".

VM version I'm using is Carbon 3.8.12beta-4u although unix vm 3.9-9 seems to exhibit the same problems.

So, what could it be? How can I restore performance? Rebuilding the image will take a couple days I'd guess with all the packages shoehorned into it with various compatibility tweaks I've made along the way.

-Todd Blanchard

- 1704830 tallies, 27602874 msec.

**Tree** 100.0% {27602874ms} MCWorkingCopy>>newVersionWithName:message: 99.9% {27575271ms} MCPackage>>snapshot 99.9% {27575271ms} MethodReference>>asMethodDefinition 99.9% {27575271ms} MCMethodDefinition class>>forMethodReference: 99.9% {27575271ms} MethodReference>>timeStamp 99.9% {27575271ms} CompiledMethod>>timeStamp 99.8% {27547668ms} StandardFileStream>>close 99.8% {27547668ms} StandardFileStream>>unregister 99.8% {27547668ms} StandardFileStream class>>unregister: 99.8% {27547668ms} WeakRegistry>>remove:ifAbsent: 99.8% {27547668ms} WeakKeyDictionary(Dictionary)

...

removeKey:ifAbsent:

99.8% {27547668ms} WeakKeyDictionary>>fixCollisionsFrom: 99.8% {27547668ms} WeakKeyDictionary>>rehash 99.7% {27520065ms} WeakKeyDictionary>>scanForNil: 99.6% {27492463ms} primitives **Leaves** 99.7% {27520065ms} WeakKeyDictionary>>scanForNil:

**Memory** old +11,980,828 bytes young -1,937,972 bytes used +10,042,856 bytes