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List:       quanta
Subject:    Re: [Quanta] Quanta and CPU/Memory consumption
From:       James Ellis <james.ellis () gmail ! com>
Date:       2008-05-21 0:50:34
Message-ID: 200805211050.35366.james () webqs ! com
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ok, here's some more info:

Symptoms:
* Quanta uses between 50 and 99% of CPU and about 4-7% of memory on startup, 
loading up medium to large projects (> 1000 files). The system is fine at 
other times.
* Running an strace on the pid shows Quanta is doing various filesystem 
operations like fstat64, lstat64, chdir, stat64, open, readlink etc etc. For 
large projects with symlinks this can take 5 to 10 minutes to complete.
Would it be correct to assume this is to populate the file tree, among other 
things ?

Projects:
* There are some projects I work on which I don't have control over the amount 
of files
* Some projects are a split about 80/20 images/text
* Some projects have symlinks to other filesystem locations

System:
* Intel(R) Pentium(R) M processor 1600MHz
* 1.2GB RAM
* Quanta 3.5.9
* KDE 3.5.9 / 4.0.4 (happens in both)
* Kubuntu 8.04, fully updated
Other software running at the same time (that use similar resources)
* Kontact, Xorg, Firefox.

Ways I have tried to fix:
* reorganise any symlinks to avoid possible recursion
* alter the Project Properties to ignore symlinks and non text files (never 
open jpg's in Quanta, anyway) but these options don't seem to be available
* make sure no other processes are causing the problem, they aren't.

My questions:
* Is it possible to ignore symlinks per project ? Some symlinks are 
placeholders to other directories in the same project - to aid with web 
server setup. Symlinks could then be just denoted in the tree view rather 
than followed ?
* Is it possible to have an option like "include only text files" or "exclude 
binary files" in the Project Properties, rather than the "Insert only markup, 
script and image files" and "Insert files with the following mask" in the New 
Project widget. Neither of the current options are valid for me, especially 
as files may be named with various extensions.
* Could there be a minimal startup option - to just show files, directories 
and symlinks in the tree. I don't really mind if the icons are not correct 
for the file type or if the parser finds an error (I handle parser errors in 
various other tests). As long as I can get a file tree representation and 
click on the files to open them quickly, it's good enough for me.
I noticed there are some other treeview plugins for Kate floating around the 
web - maybe one of those could be an option to investigate ?

Any other info needed, feel free to ask me.

Thanks
james

On Mon, 19 May 2008 05:13:15 pm Eric Laffoon wrote:
> On Sunday 18 May 2008 8:32:39 pm James Ellis wrote:
> > Hi
> >
> > I'm not sure about anyone else but I find Quanta's CPU and memory usage
> > to be pretty extreme, especially on startup. Out of all the KDE apps that
> > I use it's the one that slows down the system the most, by a fair margin.
> > To the point where there is a noticeable lag when typing this message
> > between key stroked and the key appearing on the page.
>
> And then there is the old standard about diagnostic information... A man
> goes to his doctor and says "I feel blue" the doctor says "take these
> pills". Of course not! Now on your system I see you're running... Hmmm?
> I've got GIGO here.
>
> > It's most noticeable on startup when a project is being scanned - it's
> > less of an issue with small projects which would point to a scaling
> > issue. I regularly see CPU usage between 50 and 99% and memory usage
> > generally outstrips Xorg which usually runs at 6% or so. Once Quanta has
> > finished it's startup dance, system load returns to normal.
> > Doing an strace on the process reveals what looks to be Quanta doing a
> > stat on every file in the project.
>
> One would think the people using Quanta would be crazy to put up with
> developers nuts enough to write a program that bad, and I'm sure I'm not
> alone in not seeing the same thing you are. I don't doubt you're seeing it
> but you are describing an anomoly under the apparent assumption I'm going
> to be seeing the same thing. You may as well ask about a movie I didn't
> see... Diagnostics requres data.
>
> > So, I guess the big questions are
> > - is this cpu and memory usage really needed?
>
> Absolutely not! However that's not to say various factors could not cause
> isolated cases like you're describing and certainly without the ability to
> evalute the factors of that data I just have to hope it's something like
> you're running an old version where known bugs have been fixed or really
> huge files with very little RAM.
>
> > - Does Quanta need to stat every file in the project on startup?
>
> Quanta parses every file on load. That's a little different and more
> involved. It is essential to provide the services it offers. In all but the
> most extreme cases it should not cause resource issues. I'm not sure about
> the rest without looking at the code.
>
> > - Couldn't it just read the XML project file and put a representation of
> > that in the file tree? This would put the onus on a developer who makes
> > major file changes to rescan the tree manually.
>
> It does read the XML file. You're probably noting safety procedures to
> insure the file is valid. Without knowing specifics you probably have some
> other issue causing system load. The code you're referencing has been
> stable for years with who knows how many thousands or millions of users and
> it's been several years since I've seen any performance complaints like
> this. Those were related to parser bugs with small specific issues. Without
> knowing specifics I am sure that an operation like checking a file is very
> fast and you would have to have an uncharacteristicly huge number of files
> for that to be an issue.
>
> > - Maybe there is an option to turn it off for startup ?
>
> I would have to check with Andras. However unless your projects are massive
> or your system ancient it is likely there is another problem and without
> knowing the specifics there is too much to speculate on to offer a good
> answer.
>
> > Thanks
> > James
>
> Occasionally people do bring up specific issues where unusual circumstances
> cause problems. Often other system issues cause problems, but we rely on
> our users to get us a reliable description and sometimes example files to
> recreate an anomoly and test.


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