Re: gEDA-user: Pcb performance issues

[Peter Clifton <pcjc2@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Wed, 2008-03-12 at 17:11 +0800, Stephen Ng wrote:
> I was wondering if anyone has noticed a performance problem with pcb.

There are a few, but they relate to things like pins and vias cutting
holes in ground planes.

>  I have tried this on 3 or 4 versions already on a FC6 installation. I
> even went all the way back to pcb-20060414 and found some strange
> behaviour. I will describe my initial experiences with version
> 20060822 as this version (I think) is the one which saw a substantial
> change in the UI (I'm sorry I do not have the time to read all the
> release notes so please bear with me) as well as any newer versions
> that I tried. In all cases I am running on a FC6 machine. Apart from
> using yum to install v20070208, in all other cases, I compiled them
> from source. In all cases - 

It sounds like you have a broken GTK or glib installation, possibly
something in FC6 doesn't agree with your PC.

Given the timings you're quoting, I'm guessing something is _really_
broken, or that this is an old PC you're working on? What kind of CPU
speed and memory does it have?

This said, do any other GTK based applications have problems on your PC?

> Sometimes I can select the part and drag it to the board, but the
> system becomes unresponsive again.

The action should be click the part in the library window, then move to
the board. There is no dragging between the two.

>  If I select a part from the "Load element data to paste-buffer" menu
> item instead, the system will also take a very long time to respond.

I'm guessing some GTK, X server or graphics driver problem. What is the
rest of the system running like?

Run dmesg... check there are no warnings about hard disk read problems,
check how much free memory is available with top (and that you're not
hitting swap).

> I've use various versions of pcb over the last 2 or 3 years and never
> found a problem. I've not used the program in maybe 6 to 9 months and
> in the meantime installed FC6. It's too late for me now to go back to
> FC5 if it turns out that the problem is related to FC6, but somehow I
> don't think so. I suspect that when a decision was made to change the
> user interface, something has gone wrong.

Lesstif should (as far as I know) be no slower than the old version. I
suspect the GTK version might be a little slower, but nothing so drastic
as what you're describing.


Best wishes,
> 
-- 
Peter Clifton

Electrical Engineering Division,
Engineering Department,
University of Cambridge,
9, JJ Thomson Avenue,
Cambridge
CB3 0FA

Tel: +44 (0)7729 980173 - (No signal in the lab!)



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