Created attachment 479723 [details] Sysprof capture (normal non-incognito launch) Here is a Sysprof capture launching Epiphany 50.4 "normally" (not* incognito mode), configured to have all content filters (adblocking, cookie banners blocking, intelligent tracking protection, etc.) disabled. *: in incognito mode, for some reason, Epiphany would process the content filters even if you disable them, so you'd end up with similar results as the Sysprof captures I'm attaching to https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/epiphany/-/work_items/2880.

Created attachment 479724 [details] Sysprof capture flamegraph In the flamegraph, we can see here that other than the bunch of webkit web processes being created on startup for the bunch of tabs, the largest tower of function calls has to do with SkFontMgr spamming fontconfig.

Created attachment 479725 [details] Sysprof marks I don't know if this one shows anything meaningful.

Just reading the flame graph, it seems SkFontMgr_fontconfig::onMatchFamilyStyle is absurdly slow when calling FcFontMatch() and especially remove_weak(), which itself has a warning "This can be quite expensive." OK, but surely it's not intended to be *this* expensive. 5 seconds is pretty extreme. One of the comments in the Skia code looked familiar. Turns out I copied this slow Skia code into WebKit's FontCacheFreeType.cpp a decade ago, in 165476@main. Then in https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=19375 the Fontconfig developers added an API that we could use to avoid the need for it. Then many years later, I finally got around to using it and discovered it didn't work, https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/fontconfig/fontconfig/-/work_items/294. Finally I was able to actually use the new API in 241000@main, but I never contributed this change back to Skia. Later on, WebKitGTK switched from Cario to Skia, and therefore from FontCacheFreeType.cpp to FontCacheSkia.cpp. So now that we are using Skia directly, and we are right back to square one. Anyway, key observation: the slow function SkFontMgr_fontconfig::onMatchFamilyStyle looks extremely similar to FontCacheFreeType::strongAliasesForFamily, which is obsolete since 241000@main. It's very likely that the slow code can be replaced by using FcPatternGetWithBinding(), assuming Skia is willing to depend on Fontconfig 2.14, which it should be because that is pretty old now. It would require some investigation, though, because the WebKit code FontCache::createFontPlatformData in FontCacheFreeType.cpp does font matching and then chooses a family that has a strong family binding, whereas SkFontMgr_fontconfig::onMatchFamilyStyle actually does the opposite. And the strategies are also not identical: FontCacheFreeType.cpp ignores all weak family bindings, while Skia conditionally allows them depending on order. (Is that important? I'm not sure, because I don't understand Fontconfig. Probably not?) Also, the Skia code is structured such that the easiest way to implement the change would be to modify the FcPattern directly using FcPatternRemove(), which WebKit does not do. So it's not so simple as just copying the WebKit changes into Skia. But goal should be to remove is_weak() and rewrite remove_weak(). One thing I don't understand: Chrome and Firefox presumably both also use SkFontMgr_fontconfig, so why are they not comparably slow? P.S. The FCLocker in SkFontMgr_fontconfig.cpp is also obsolete and can be deleted for a small win.

P.S.S. If you have made any customizations to your Fontconfig configuration, there's a high chance that's relevant.

P.S.S.S. remove_weak is designed to allow removing FC_FAMILY or FC_POSTSCRIPT_NAME or actually any Fontconfig "object" (a better term might be "property"), but it's only ever used with FC_FAMILY, so that too can be simplified.

Created attachment 479743 [details] Test patch Actually, this was easier than I expected. Try this test patch! Who knows: it might even be correct? Hard to say, because I don't claim to understand what I'm doing. I think it is a behavior change though. The original code permitted weak matches prior to the first strong match, whereas the new code is stricter about requiring only a strong match. This should result in more failed matches and more fallback down CSS font lists. Arguably that is more correct, but whether this will lead to better results or worse results is debatable. I think I've previously decided not to sign the Google CLA -- don't remember why -- so I probably won't contribute this back to Skia. But anybody else is should feel welcome to do so.

Created attachment 479744 [details] Alternative patch Here's an alternative patch, with less-related changes, deleting unnecessary code in this file. Looks like skfontstyle_from_fcpattern() and fcpattern_from_skfontstyle() could both be simplified more, but I did not try.

I think part of the issue is that we may be hitting a fallback to synchronous file copy of compiled content filter rules -- the Fontconfig/Skia issue still dominates the profile, but seems worth looking into, so I have filed bug #315236 for that.

One more thing: it wouldn't be hard to change my patch to preserve the original behavior of accepting weak matches that are ordered before the first strong match. Maybe that would be a safer approach, because it would avoid changing which font gets selected. I don't understand why that behavior is actually desirable, though. Fontconfig is really confusing.

Created attachment 479750 [details] Alternative patch

I gave Jeff a scratch build containing my changes, but unfortunately he reports it didn't make any difference to performance. Alas. :( I had thought that might at least reduce the performance problem.

Created attachment 479762 [details] Sysprof capture flamegraph when running with Michael's 2026-05-21 patched build Indeed, when loading https://www.wikipedia.org incognito on my desktop workstation, with adblocking turned off, I get roughly these results: * Fedora 44's vanilla webkitgtk6 packages: 9-10 seconds * Michael's patched build: 9-10 seconds The 2nd attached flamegraph here (focused on the main tower of function calls) is fairly similar to the previous one, though the FontConfig functions used at the top are different in practice. Another interesting observation is that this does not seem to be a recent regression, I tried with an Ubuntu 20.04 VM here and even Epiphany 3.36.4 takes 20 seconds+ to load www.wikipedia.org (with content filters disabled)...

Next step here: I will try to create a test program for Jeff to run, using Fontconfig on its own, and calling FcFontMatch() on the same FcPatterns used by www.wikipedia.org. Presumably the problem lies in Fontconfig itself....

(In reply to Michael Catanzaro from comment #14) > Next step here: I will try to create a test program for Jeff to run, using > Fontconfig on its own, and calling FcFontMatch() on the same FcPatterns used > by www.wikipedia.org. Presumably the problem lies in Fontconfig itself.... I discovered that WebKit calls SkFontMgr_fontconfig::onMatchFamilyStyle 2105 times when loading www.wikipedia.org. So while the function itself might be a little slow, that is not the fundamental problem here. But good news: we only need to do the work 10 times, because it's only ever called for 5 fonts, and two font styles: onMatchFamilyStyle: familyName=BlinkMacSystemFont style=328080 onMatchFamilyStyle: familyName=Segoe UI style=328080 onMatchFamilyStyle: familyName=Roboto style=328080 onMatchFamilyStyle: familyName=Inter style=328080 onMatchFamilyStyle: familyName=Helvetica style=328080 onMatchFamilyStyle: familyName=BlinkMacSystemFont style=328080 onMatchFamilyStyle: familyName=Segoe UI style=328080 onMatchFamilyStyle: familyName=Roboto style=328080 onMatchFamilyStyle: familyName=Inter style=328080 onMatchFamilyStyle: familyName=Helvetica style=328080 onMatchFamilyStyle: familyName=BlinkMacSystemFont style=328380 onMatchFamilyStyle: familyName=Segoe UI style=328380 onMatchFamilyStyle: familyName=Roboto style=328380 onMatchFamilyStyle: familyName=Inter style=328380 onMatchFamilyStyle: familyName=Helvetica style=328380 onMatchFamilyStyle: familyName=BlinkMacSystemFont style=328380 onMatchFamilyStyle: familyName=Segoe UI style=328380 onMatchFamilyStyle: familyName=Roboto style=328380 onMatchFamilyStyle: familyName=Inter style=328380 onMatchFamilyStyle: familyName=Helvetica style=328380 Creating a cache of results would fix the problem.