[tor-bugs] #10724 [BridgeDB]: Make BridgeDB's use of Stability.addOrUpdateBridgeHistory() configurable.

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#10724: Make BridgeDB's use of Stability.addOrUpdateBridgeHistory() configurable.
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 Reporter:  isis                                 |          Owner:  isis
     Type:  enhancement                          |         Status:  new
 Priority:  normal                               |      Milestone:
Component:  BridgeDB                             |        Version:
 Keywords:  bridgedb-unittests,bridgedb-parsers  |  Actual Points:
  ,bridgedb-database                             |         Points:
Parent ID:                                       |
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 I thought I remembered a ticket where sysrqb stated something to the
 effect of

 > I profiled the startup of BridgeDB, and 80% of the ~25 minute startup
 time is spent in the `Stability.addOrUpdateBridgeHistory()` function...

 but now I can't find it. Either way, it's true that most of the startup
 time is spent in this function. During that time, the servers are down,
 because BridgeDB's database transactions aren't threaded (see #5232). That
 function is called from `Main.load()`; it collects all the timestamps for
 all bridges, does a lot of expensive `sort()`ing of them, and then the
 transactions... and I'm not even certain if Metrics uses this data (or if
 anything uses this data).

 I kind of don't want to touch it until I understand more about why it was
 put there, but for the staging instance (#10723) startup times of ~25
 minutes is rather painful. I propose adding a `COLLECT_TIMESTAMPS` option
 in the config file, and if `False` then skip that block of code in
 `Main.load()`.

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Ticket URL: <https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/10724>
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