Imbuf: Change thumbnail caching location #107298

Ankit Meel · 2023-04-24T14:45:08+02:00

Ankit Meel commented

2023-04-24 14:45:08 +02:00

New paths are in decreasing order of priority.

Windows
Old: %CSIDL_PROFILE%.thumbnails
New: note the removal of leading period
%USERPROFILE%\AppData\Local\Blender Foundation\Blender\Cache\thumbnails
BKE_tempdir_base\Blender Foundation\Blender\Cache\thumbnails

Linux
Old: $XDG_CACHE_HOME/thumbnails or $HOME/.cache/thumbnails
New:
$XDG_CACHE_HOME/thumbnails
$HOME/.cache/blender/thumbnails
BKE_tempdir_base/blender/thumbnails/

macOS
Old: $HOME/.thumbnails
New: note the removal of leading period: makes the folder user visible
~/Library/Cache/Blender/thumbnails
BKE_tempdir_base/Blender/thumbnails

BKE_appdir_folder_caches added recently replaces the manual cache
folder finding done here.
Simplify char array handling also.

It was previously at https://archive.blender.org/developer/differential/0013/0013214/index.html
This time undefined thumbnail also and put it in BLI_path_join call.
Also the return len < dir_len has been added

New paths are in decreasing order of priority. Windows Old: %CSIDL_PROFILE%\.thumbnails New: note the removal of leading period %USERPROFILE%\AppData\Local\Blender Foundation\Blender\Cache\thumbnails BKE_tempdir_base\Blender Foundation\Blender\Cache\thumbnails Linux Old: $XDG_CACHE_HOME/thumbnails or $HOME/.cache/thumbnails New: $XDG_CACHE_HOME/thumbnails $HOME/.cache/blender/thumbnails BKE_tempdir_base/blender/thumbnails/ macOS Old: $HOME/.thumbnails New: note the removal of leading period: makes the folder user visible ~/Library/Cache/Blender/thumbnails BKE_tempdir_base/Blender/thumbnails BKE_appdir_folder_caches added recently replaces the manual cache folder finding done here. Simplify char array handling also. ----------- It was previously at https://archive.blender.org/developer/differential/0013/0013214/index.html This time undefined thumbnail also and put it in BLI_path_join call. Also the return len < dir_len has been added

Ankit Meel added 1 commit 2023-04-24 14:45:17 +02:00

Imbuf: Change thumbnail caching location

buildbot/vexp-code-patch-coordinator Build done.

Details

68b540f531

New paths are in decreasing order of priority.

Windows
Old: %CSIDL_PROFILE%\.thumbnails
New: note the removal of leading period
%USERPROFILE%\AppData\Local\Blender Foundation\Blender\Cache\thumbnails
BKE_tempdir_base\Blender Foundation\Blender\Cache\thumbnails

Linux
Old: $XDG_CACHE_HOME/thumbnails or $HOME/.cache/thumbnails
New:
$XDG_CACHE_HOME/thumbnails
$HOME/.cache/blender/thumbnails
BKE_tempdir_base/blender/thumbnails/

macOS
Old: $HOME/.thumbnails
New: note the removal of leading period: makes the folder user visible
~/Library/Cache/Blender/thumbnails
BKE_tempdir_base/Blender/thumbnails

BKE_appdir_folder_caches added recently replaces the manual cache
folder finding done here.
Simplify char array handling also.

-----------

It was previously at https://archive.blender.org/developer/differential/0013/0013214/index.html
This time undefined thumbnail also and put it in BLI_path_join call.

Ankit Meel commented

2023-04-24 14:50:21 +02:00

@blender-bot build

Ankit Meel requested review from Brecht Van Lommel 2023-04-24 14:58:36 +02:00

Ankit Meel requested review from Campbell Barton 2023-04-24 14:58:36 +02:00

Ankit Meel requested review from Harley Acheson 2023-04-24 14:58:37 +02:00

Ankit Meel requested review from Ray molenkamp 2023-04-24 14:58:37 +02:00

Harley Acheson commented

2023-04-25 04:53:20 +02:00

I do like the idea of moving us away from using the standard we are currently using. By no longer sharing these folders with other apps we are freed to use it in new ways.

We could decide to one day save the previews as EXR instead of PNG, so they are both smaller and faster to read and write. Or save our previews in a size that is larger than that supported by the standard: 512x512 for example.

It might be nice to (possibly) support more than one location at a time. So a shared network location might also contain a read-only cache of previews. It might also be nice to make this location overridable via command-line argument and/or environment variable.

We could support file arguments to provide multiple preview types. So a preview of "this.ttf" would give the regular preview, while a preview of "this.ttf?format=2" could be a horizontal string that we could use in lists.

We could support multiple preview types at once. We could show a PNG thumbnail of a video in the File Browser list but then show a tiny low-res video file in the tooltip.

We could support textual previews of some things. For example many users have complained that while directory listings are instant, browsing inside blends can take forever on slow connections. But we could cache a listing of the blend contents to speed that up.

I do like the idea of moving us away from using the standard we are currently using. By no longer sharing these folders with other apps we are freed to use it in new ways. We could decide to one day save the previews as EXR instead of PNG, so they are both smaller and faster to read and write. Or save our previews in a size that is larger than that supported by the standard: 512x512 for example. It might be nice to (possibly) support more than one location at a time. So a shared network location might also contain a read-only cache of previews. It might also be nice to make this location overridable via command-line argument and/or environment variable. We could support file arguments to provide multiple preview types. So a preview of "this.ttf" would give the regular preview, while a preview of "this.ttf?format=2" could be a horizontal string that we could use in lists. We could support multiple preview types at once. We could show a PNG thumbnail of a video in the File Browser list but then show a tiny low-res video file in the tooltip. We could support textual previews of some things. For example many users have complained that while directory listings are instant, browsing inside blends can take forever on slow connections. But we could cache a listing of the blend contents to speed that up.

Harley Acheson referenced this pull request

2023-05-08 17:49:21 +02:00

UI: Increase File Browser Minimum Cache size #107711

Julian Eisel commented

2023-05-08 19:33:30 +02:00

There is no motivation for this outlined here, so I don't quite understand where this is coming from. On Linux and macOS these locations are standardized, so why would we want to deviate? (Although I think on macOS we use a non-standard location now and this patch corrects that?) On Linux the file browser system thumbnails would stop working I guess. I bet there are tools to cleanup such temporary data, and they wouldn't work with Blender thumbnails anymore.

Ankit Meel commented

2023-05-08 20:49:46 +02:00

On win, Ray and Harley approved the location change. Plus I don't think any other system is dependent on the location of blender thumbnail cache. Plus the original comment " /* Yes, applications shouldn't store data there, but so does GIMP :). */"

For mac, ccache recently moved from ~/.cache to ~/Library/Caches/ccache. I frequently delete ~/Library/Caches folder if it gets big. Apple has an API for getting the path https://developer.apple.com/documentation/foundation/nssearchpathdirectory/nscachesdirectory

So the patch simplifies code and improves app behaviour for these two platforms.

On Linux the file browser system thumbnails would stop working I guess

For linux, I was not aware of this and indeed it's a major downgrade. Would it be fine if I keep the behaviour on linux same and still make code changes ?

On win, Ray and Harley approved the location change. Plus I don't think any other system is dependent on the location of blender thumbnail cache. Plus the original comment " /* Yes, applications shouldn't store data there, but so does GIMP :). */" For mac, ccache recently moved from ~/.cache to ~/Library/Caches/ccache. I frequently delete ~/Library/Caches folder if it gets big. Apple has an API for getting the path https://developer.apple.com/documentation/foundation/nssearchpathdirectory/nscachesdirectory So the patch simplifies code and improves app behaviour for these two platforms. >On Linux the file browser system thumbnails would stop working I guess For linux, I was not aware of this and indeed it's a major downgrade. Would it be fine if I keep the behaviour on linux same and still make code changes ?

Julian Eisel commented

2023-05-08 21:22:48 +02:00

Just please make sure that your PRs always include a motivation, this is arguably the most important part of the description (also see https://wiki.blender.org/wiki/Process/Contributing_Code#Ingredients_of_a_Pull_Request)

Windows: No idea if there is a standard thumbnail/cache location, if the path you chose makes more sense, go for it of course.
macOS: Right if this is the standard location now, let's use it. But shouldn't we actually query NSCachesDirectory then?
Linux: Sure if the code becomes easier but the behavior doesn't change, that's fine.

Just please make sure that your PRs always include a motivation, this is arguably the most important part of the description (also see https://wiki.blender.org/wiki/Process/Contributing_Code#Ingredients_of_a_Pull_Request) * Windows: No idea if there is a standard thumbnail/cache location, if the path you chose makes more sense, go for it of course. * macOS: Right if this is the standard location now, let's use it. But shouldn't we actually query `NSCachesDirectory` then? * Linux: Sure if the code becomes easier but the behavior doesn't change, that's fine.

Julian Eisel commented

2023-05-08 21:25:49 +02:00

macOS: Right if this is the standard location now, let's use it. But shouldn't we actually query NSCachesDirectory then?

Ah never mind, I see this patch does that in fact.

> * macOS: Right if this is the standard location now, let's use it. But shouldn't we actually query `NSCachesDirectory` then? Ah never mind, I see this patch does that in fact.

buildbot/vexp-code-patch-coordinator Build done.

Details

This pull request has changes conflicting with the target branch.

source/blender/imbuf/intern/thumbs.c

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git fetch -u ankitm/thumbn:ankitm-ankitm/thumbn

git checkout ankitm-ankitm/thumbn

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Imbuf: Change thumbnail caching location #107298

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