Posted inInformation Technology

CopperSpice Experiments – Pt. 6

seasoned_geek by seasoned_geek

Sorry I haven’t written in a while. Life has been busy and I’ve been hacking away at Diamond in my “spare” time. I guess I need to catch this post series up.

I used GitKraken to clone the repository into ~/Projects/diamond. Then I created ~/Projects/diamond_build and ~/Projects/diamond_debug. Diamond had an additional dependency of hunspell.

sudo apt install libhunspell-dev

After that it was time to build. Change to the build directory and type the following:

cmake -G "Ninja" -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Debug -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=../diamond_debug -DCMAKE_PREFIX_PATH=/usr/lib/cs_lib/lib/cmake/CopperSpice ../diamond
roland@roland-amd-desktop:~/Projects/diamond_build$ cmake -G "Ninja" -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release -DCMAKE_PREFIX_PATH=/usr/lib/cs_lib/lib/cmake/CopperSpice ../diamond
-- The C compiler identification is GNU 9.3.0
-- The CXX compiler identification is GNU 9.3.0
-- Check for working C compiler: /usr/bin/cc
-- Check for working C compiler: /usr/bin/cc -- works
-- Detecting C compiler ABI info
-- Detecting C compiler ABI info - done
-- Detecting C compile features
-- Detecting C compile features - done
-- Check for working CXX compiler: /usr/bin/c++
-- Check for working CXX compiler: /usr/bin/c++ -- works
-- Detecting CXX compiler ABI info
-- Detecting CXX compiler ABI info - done
-- Detecting CXX compile features
-- Detecting CXX compile features - done
-- Found PkgConfig: /usr/bin/pkg-config (found version "0.29.1") 
-- Checking for module 'hunspell'
--   Found hunspell, version 1.7.0

Diamond configured to run on:  Linux 64 bit, Release Mode
Diamond will be built in:      /home/roland/Projects/diamond_build
Diamond will be installed in:  /usr/local


-- Configuring done
-- Generating done
-- Build files have been written to: /home/roland/Projects/diamond_build
roland@roland-amd-desktop:~/Projects/diamond_build$

Yeah! We are ready to build!

ninja install

I do need to tell you that if you just pulled down CopperSpice to a Ubuntu 20.04 LTS system, there is a shiny new dependency for the library build.

You need to install that and rebuild. Well, I rebuilt because I pulled down the updated source. It fixes or makes clearer an error message you see in the terminal.

The Drive Change

Initially this machine had a Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 160Gb drive. As I said before, my BOINC machines get the old drives put in them so I can get the last bit of use out of them. Building/changing/testing/using Diamond was too brutal for words. I deliberately left that drive in because I wanted to fix as many performance problems as I could given that Diamond uses JSON to store settings, last search, etc. Full builds were pretty bad. Just look at the specs for the drive. It’s an ATA-300 with only an 8MB buffer. Sadly, I’m old enough to remember when that drive was fast.

A quick image backup using Terabyte Drive Image for Linux and I swapped it out for a slightly better old drive from the shelf. 

WDC WD2500AAKX-753CA1 (17.01H17)
SATA 300 with 16MB buffer

Still an ATA-300, but that 16MB buffer makes a real difference. I really don’t think it has anything to do with the extra 90Gig of storage. I’m only using a tiny fraction with this minimal system.

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Roland Hughes started his IT career in the early 1980s. He quickly became a consultant and president of Logikal Solutions, a software consulting firm specializing in OpenVMS application and C++/Qt touchscreen/embedded Linux development. Early in his career he became involved in what is now called cross platform development. Given the dearth of useful books on the subject he ventured into the world of professional author in 1995 writing the first of the "Zinc It!" book series for John Gordon Burke Publisher, Inc.

A decade later he released a massive (nearly 800 pages) tome "The Minimum You Need to Know to Be an OpenVMS Application Developer" which tried to encapsulate the essential skills gained over what was nearly a 20 year career at that point. From there "The Minimum You Need to Know" book series was born.

Three years later he wrote his first novel "Infinite Exposure" which got much notice from people involved in the banking and financial security worlds. Some of the attacks predicted in that book have since come to pass. While it was not originally intended to be a trilogy, it became the first book of "The Earth That Was" trilogy:
Infinite Exposure
Lesedi - The Greatest Lie Ever Told
John Smith - Last Known Survivor of the Microsoft Wars

When he is not consulting Roland Hughes posts about technology and sometimes politics on his blog. He also has regularly scheduled Sunday posts appearing on the Interesting Authors blog.