What to implement in the extension

Brainless,

I've been looking into doing this same thing. I initially started with the idea of doing "core/bootstrap", which I take to mean includes/

However, as you'll soon see, that's a massive job and once complete, you're then left chasing cvs to keep upto date. So, I thought a better method is to identify the bottlenecks and just produce a minimised PECL tyo handle those parts.

Only the really "heavy hit" sites would need such extreme streamlining, so you have to also maintain a core patch that wraps replaced functions with if (!function_exists('somefunc')) so the core php changes are minimal.

Given Dries recent blog regarding the time spent in the db abstraction, my first target is getting rid of the preg_match_callback() function. Calling PHP userspace from the extention / internals is somewhat expensive. Normally these types of things go unnoticed. However, look at just how often Drupal is using this feature. A callback into userspace for every SQL token/placeholder used. This is one place alot of time is spent at the moment. So, that's where I'm starting out.

best regards
--AjK