Very long startup time...

[smlgbl]

Hi,

does anybody know whether it is possible to change the startup of pms to now load the whole library? I didn't check the source, whether it really loads all the data, but I find the startup pretty time-consuming. My library consists of about 45000 songs, so it takes like up to 15 seconds. ncmpc doesn't need "any" time and somehow has similar features for searching. Sorry if that underestimates the full power of pms...

Thanks for any hints...

[ambientsound]

Hi,

Yes it's correct that PMS loads the entire library at startup. This is because of the way the library is presented to the user. The entire library is available through one big list, contrary to ncmpc, which only has a file / directory structure.

I doubt that this will ever change in the future - however, I might add library caching so that pms loads a local version instead of querying the mpd server each time.

Hope this clarifies your question.


Regards,
Kim

[smlgbl]

Yeah, that does indeed explain it. Actually I'm using ncmpcpp, which also has a library feature and with the alternative interface it almost looks like pms...anyway, can't you put that processing into the background or another thread, so that the interface with mpd is available right away? Sorry, i'd just prefer starting my music right away.

[max]

contrary to ncmpc, which only has a file / directory structure.

You must be talking about a 3 year old version of ncmpc. ncmpc has the same "library" feature as ncmpcpp (and has had it even before ncmcpp was born).

While I don't think having all songs in one plain large list is a good user interface, I believe that the naive algorithm pms uses (i.e. just slurping *everything* at once) is highly inefficient. This can be done better, without caching (caching is the "brute force" approach to that problem). pms is by far the slowest and most wasteful MPD client I have ever measured (http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.audio.musicpd.devel/1275).