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Cache code review time?

Feynt Mistral
Registered User
Join date: 24 Sep 2005
Posts: 551
07-20-2006 10:46
For a while now I've been contemplating how the current cache system works for SL's client and noticing that it grows to a truly monsterous size unless you regularly clean it out or use -purge in the desktop shortcut (in windows). Recently I've learned that it's not just me and a couple of people, freaks of programming, but a rather sizable amount of people out there who suffer from this ever growing cache. And it isn't the normal stuff either, like running across half of the main land which would logically make the cache quite large from all the textures and objects. No, it's redundant stuff, multiple copies of the same information from being in the same sim between multiple sessions. It isn't even constrained by the cache size settings in the Preferences dialog. And the cache doesn't really seem to work either, I can teleport out of a sim for a few minutes to meet a friend, then teleport back and have to download every texture again (and there's only a few sims I go to. It's not like 1 gig's worth of textures are taken up between two sims with half a dozen residents amongst them).


So my questions are, when was the last time a review of the cache code was held, and do you think you could improve upon it so it won't grow past the boundaries set in the preferences? I think somewhere along the lines it has been twisted through too many minor changes into something that is no longer effective.
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Kelly Linden
Linden Developer
Join date: 29 Mar 2004
Posts: 896
07-20-2006 11:26
The cache really should not grow beyond the boundries set in preferences. I know there is a bug where if you run multiple viewers, they each create their own cache, and you can end up with multiple cache files. Due to the nature of development I have ended up with 10+ gigs of cache files before from this.

And yes, our cache code is far from perfect and there are tasks in the big list to fix and improve many of the issues with it. I do not know how high they are ranked in the priority list however, or any time frame.
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