Prima + MCE::Hobo demonstration

Respected Monks,

Starting with MCE 1.828 and MCE::Shared 1.825, running MCE with Prima is possible. The following is based on the Tk + MCE::Hobo demonstration (2nd example in the post). I tested Prima + MCE on Linux using CentOS 7.x and Windows with Strawberry Perl 5.22.x.

use strict;
use warnings;

use MCE::Hobo;
use MCE::Shared;

use Prima qw( Application Buttons Label );

my $que  = MCE::Shared->queue();
my $msg  = MCE::Shared->scalar("Start");
my $hobo = MCE::Hobo->create("bg_task");

my $wm = Prima::MainWindow->new(
   size => [ 250, 200 ], text => 'Hello world!', onDestroy => \&quit
);

my $lbl1 = Prima::Label->create(
   owner => $wm, size => [ 220, 50 ], text => 'Prima + MCE Demo',
   alignment => ta::Center, valignment => ta::Middle,
   pack => {}
);

my $btn1 = Prima::Button->new(
   owner => $wm, size => [ 120, 50 ], text => $msg->get,
   onClick => \&fun,
   pack => {}
);

my $btn2 = Prima::Button->new(
   owner => $wm, size => [ 120, 50 ], text => 'Quit',
   onClick => sub { $::application->close },
   pack => {}
);

my $timer = Prima::Timer->create(
   timeout => 100, onTick => sub {
      my $new_text = $msg->get;
      if ($new_text ne $btn1->text) {
         $btn1->set( text => $msg->get );
      }
   }
);

$timer->start;

run Prima;

sub fun {
   $que->enqueue("some event");
   return;
}

sub quit {
   $timer->stop;
   $hobo->exit->join;
   $::application->close;
}

sub bg_task {
   while ( my $event = $que->dequeue ) {
      $msg->set("Step One");
      sleep 1;
      $msg->set("Step Two");
      sleep 1;
      $msg->set("Step Three");
   }
}
[download]

So that the quit function isn't called twice, I'm only calling $::application->close inside the Quit handler. That closes the window which then triggers the MainWindow's onDestroy handler.

Regards, Mario

Update: Updated the timer handler. Thanks zentara.

Update: On the Mac, mouse clicks between windows is greatly improved by setting an option in XQuartz -> Preferences -> Windows -> Click-through Inactive Windows. When enabled, clicking on an inactive window will cause that mouse click to pass through to that window in addition to activating it.

Update: To improve performance on the Mac, set XQuartz -> Preferences -> Output -> Colors to Thousands. Then relaunch XQuartz for the option to take effect. Prima for the most part runs very well. Thank you, Dmitry.

Comment on Prima + MCE::Hobo demonstration Download Code

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Re: Prima + MCE::Hobo demonstration by zentara (Archbishop) on Apr 29, 2017 at 11:57 UTC
Hi marioroy, I'm glad to see someone use Prima, as it is an under-appreciated toolkit. I did notice one unusual aspect of running your code. On my linux system, slackware, I notice a flickering in the $btn1 text as the background process runs. It almost looks like a "feature", indicating which step is active. :-) Here is an unoptimized hack to fix the problem in the timer. It looks like this is a perfect opportunity to use a "state" variable in the timer, but this is just a brute force method, which makes it clear what is happening. `my $text = ''; my $timer = Prima::Timer->create( timeout => 100, onTick => sub { my $new_text = $msg->get; if ($new_text ne $text){ $btn1->set( text => $new_text ); $text = $new_text; } } );` [download] I'm not really a human, but I play one on earth. ..... an animated JAPH	[reply] [d/l]
Re^2: Prima + MCE::Hobo demonstration by marioroy (Prior) on Apr 29, 2017 at 14:51 UTC
Hi zentara. That's nice++. Prima is new to me. I tried calling $btn1->text to obtain the string and that works too. `my $timer = Prima::Timer->create( timeout => 100, onTick => sub { my $new_text = $msg->get; if ($new_text ne $btn1->text) { $btn1->set( text => $msg->get ); } } );` [download]	[reply] [d/l]
Re: Prima + MCE::Hobo demonstration by Discipulus (Canon) on Apr 29, 2017 at 13:37 UTC
Thanks marioroy for this nth wonderful example! I had not the time to investigate Prima before: when I checked no one at PM was using it. Now maybe the time to give it a serious check out is probably arrived. The example runs fine and is a perfect skeleton code to work on! I'm now at home on a machine where MCE::Hobo was not present; i've seen a `stability canary` chirping in my screen! thanks also for your care and attention you put in everything you release. `* * The stability canary says: chirp! chirp! (it seems to be quite hap +py) **` [download] I succesfully tested with `strawberry 5.14.2 win7 Prima 1.51 MCE::Hobo 1.825` L There are no rules, there are no thumbs.. Reinvent the wheel, then learn The Wheel; may be one day you reinvent one of THE WHEELS.	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re^2: Prima + MCE::Hobo demonstration by marioroy (Prior) on Apr 29, 2017 at 15:24 UTC
Hi Discipulus. Interesting... IO::FDPass along with Sereal::Decoder and Sereal::Encoder are listed in the recommends section inside the Makefile.PL for MCE::Shared. It happens to be that Canary::Stability is a dependency for IO::FDPass. Folks running a recent Strawberry Perl binary will be happy to know that there's a ppm package already made. Just realized now that 1.46 was released about a year ago. Prima is at 1.51, currently. `C:\perl-5.22.2.1>ppm PPM interactive shell (11.11_03) - type 'help' for available commands. PPM> install Prima Version 1.46 of 'Prima' is already installed. Remove it, or use 'verify --upgrade Prima'. PPM> exit Quit! C:\perl-5.22.2.1>` [download] I received a tip from Discipulus via email that Prima installs fine on Strawberry Perl with the following command. The --skiptest argument is necessary to overcome a failing mouse simulation test. `cpanp i Prima --skiptest` [download] Thank you, Discipulus.	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re: Prima + MCE::Hobo demonstration by marioroy (Prior) on May 01, 2017 at 18:45 UTC
Respected Monks, An upcoming release (MCE::Shared 1.826) continues forward with regards to decreasing memory consumption. In doing so, I took out all the code pertaining to condvar, handle, and queue from inside MCE/Shared/Server.pm and re-factored the bits into MCE/Shared/Condvar.pm, Handle.pm, and Queue.pm respectively. Furthermore, I enabled AUTOLOAD inside MCE/Shared.pm and moved all the sugar-type functions inside it. For testing, the following script loads the relevant modules and constructs a shared queue. `use strict; use warnings; use Prima qw( Application Buttons Label ); #use Parallel::ForkManager; #use MCE; #use MCE::Loop; use MCE::Hobo; use MCE::Shared; my $que = MCE::Shared->queue(); #busy loop, review top at OS level, press Ctrl-C to exit for ( 1 .. 2e9 ) { 1 }` [download] Results reported by top (resident memory size): 20.7 Mib Prima + Parallel::ForkManager + MCE::Shared->queue v1.824 20.9 Mib Prima + Parallel::ForkManager + MCE::Shared->queue v1.825 20.7 Mib Prima + Parallel::ForkManager + MCE::Shared->queue v1.826 21.2 Mib Prima + MCE::Loop + MCE::Shared->queue v1.824 20.4 Mib Prima + MCE::Loop + MCE::Shared->queue v1.825 19.3 Mib Prima + MCE::Loop + MCE::Shared->queue v1.826 21.1 Mib Prima + MCE Core API + MCE::Shared->queue v1.824 20.4 Mib Prima + MCE Core API + MCE::Shared->queue v1.825 19.1 Mib Prima + MCE Core API + MCE::Shared->queue v1.826 18.8 Mib Prima + MCE::Hobo + MCE::Shared->queue v1.824 19.1 Mib Prima + MCE::Hobo + MCE::Shared->queue v1.825 18.4 Mib Prima + MCE::Hobo + MCE::Shared->queue v1.826 14.7 Mib Prima (only) 8.4 Mib Parallel::ForkManager + MCE::Shared v1.826 7.1 Mib MCE::Loop + MCE::Shared v1.826 6.8 Mib MCE Core API + MCE::Shared v1.826 6.1 Mib MCE::Hobo + MCE::Shared v1.826 [download] Q. Why is memory footprint important for MCE::Hobo? A. I have an add-on module using MCE::Hobo to send-recv data, similar to Parallel::Fork::BossWorkerAsync. Someone has requested this for a long time and decided okay will do it. But first, wanted to reduce memory consumption. MCE::Shared 1.826 will be released sometimes this week. Regards, Mario	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re^2: Prima + MCE::Hobo demonstration by marioroy (Prior) on May 02, 2017 at 07:19 UTC
Greetings, I reached my goal in reaching below 2M per worker. Testing involved running 200 workers with and without threads for the MCE demonstration and without threads for MCE::Hobo. MCE::Flow use strict; use warnings; use threads; # comment out for child processes use MCE::Flow; use MCE::Shared; use Time::HiRes 'time'; my $n = MCE::Shared->scalar(0); my $s = time; sub task { # do something, plenty time to see top my $v; $v = $n->incr() for 1 .. 933; } mce_flow { max_workers => 200 }, \&task; MCE::Flow::finish; printf "duration: %0.3f\n", time - $s; print $n->get(), "\n"; __END__ main process, shared-manager process, and 200 workers # with threads: e.g. use threads 498M MCE 1.827, MCE::Shared 1.824 437M MCE 1.828, MCE::Shared 1.825 <- big reduction 399M MCE 1.829, MCE::Shared 1.826 <- more reduction # without threads MCE 1.829, MCE::Shared 1.826: ~ 1744K per worker [download] MCE::Hobo `use strict; use warnings; use MCE::Hobo; use MCE::Shared; use Time::HiRes 'time'; my $n = MCE::Shared->scalar(0); my $s = time; sub task { # do something, plenty time to see top my $v; $v = $n->incr() for 1 .. 933; } MCE::Hobo->create(\&task) for 1 .. 200; MCE::Hobo->waitall; printf "duration: %0.3f\n", time - $s; print $n->get(), "\n"; __END__ main process, shared-manager process, and 200 workers MCE::Shared 1.826: ~ 1356K per worker` [download] Well, I never imagined for MCE::Hobo to consume less than 1.4M per worker, let alone MCE::Flow running below 2M. MCE 1.829 and MCE::Shared 1.826 will be released later this week. Regards, Mario	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re^3: Prima + MCE::Hobo demonstration by marioroy (Prior) on May 02, 2017 at 08:37 UTC
For completeness, here's the code using Parallel::ForkManager. Calling MCE::Shared->init() is important to spread out IPC across 12 data channels. Not doing so, means all 200 workers share a single data channel and take much longer to run. Init is called automatically for MCE, MCE::Hobo and threads. Parallel::ForkManager use strict; use warnings; use Parallel::ForkManager; use MCE::Shared; use Time::HiRes 'time'; my $n = MCE::Shared->scalar(0); my $s = time; my $fork_manager = new Parallel::ForkManager(200); $fork_manager->set_waitpid_blocking_sleep(0); foreach my $child ( 1 .. 200 ) { my $pid = $fork_manager->start($child) and next; # init optionally takes an integer value MCE::Shared->init($child); my $v; $v = $n->incr() for 1 .. 933; $fork_manager->finish($child); } $fork_manager->wait_all_children; printf "duration: %0.3f\n", time - $s; print $n->get(), "\n"; __END__ main process, shared-manager process, and 200 workers Parallel::ForkManager: ~ 1200K per worker [download] It's great knowing that MCE::Hobo isn't far behind regarding memory consumption. What I've learn is that simply loading modules doesn't tell the whole story. One must capture memory consumption while running for a better picture. :) Regards, Mario	[reply] [d/l]
Re^4: Prima + MCE::Hobo demonstration by zentara (Archbishop) on May 02, 2017 at 13:56 UTC
Re^5: Prima + MCE::Hobo demonstration by marioroy (Prior) on May 02, 2017 at 15:48 UTC
Re^3: Prima + MCE::Hobo demonstration by marioroy (Prior) on May 03, 2017 at 07:41 UTC
MCE 1.829 and MCE::Shared 1.826 have been released. These include the updates for reducing memory consumption, especially for MCE::Shared::Server.	[reply]
Re: Prima + MCE::Hobo demonstration by marioroy (Prior) on May 02, 2017 at 21:01 UTC
Compiling Prima on Mac OS X. These days, OS X doesn't ship with X11. Fortunately, XQuartz is available from https://www.xquartz.org. That provides the Mac with X11 support and ships with freetype2 and PNG libraries including header files. XQuartz installs under /opt/X11. Below, one may need to run with configure --prefix=/opt/X11 when building the GIF and JPEG libraries. For unknown reasons, Prima does not check /usr/local on my system. GIF: https://sourceforge.net/projects/giflib/files/ `tar xjf giflib-5.1.4.tar.bz2 cd giflib-5.1.4 ./configure --prefix=/opt/X11 make sudo make install` [download] JPEG: http://www.ijg.org/files/ `tar xf jpegsrc.v9b.tar.gz cd jpeg-9b ./configure --prefix=/opt/X11 make sudo make install` [download] Prima: https://metacpan.org/pod/Prima `tar xf Prima-1.51.tar.gz cd Prima-1.51 PKG_CONFIG_PATH=/opt/X11/lib/pkgconfig perl Makefile.PL X11BASE=/opt/X +11 WITH_GTK2=0 make sudo make install` [download] Unfortunately, the fonts aren't as nice as running a Tk app. It did find freetype2 when building Prima. For help, I sent the author an email about why fonts have a staircase look. Regards, Mario Update: The author confirm Prima selecting bitmap (core X11 fonts) over freetypes.	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re^2: Prima + MCE::Hobo demonstration by marioroy (Prior) on May 03, 2017 at 15:07 UTC
Dmitry committed fixes into master to ensure freetype fonts are selected over bitmap (core X11 fonts). On the Mac, the Makefile.PL now checks for pkgconfig residing under /opt/X11/lib. Not having to set PKG_CONFIG_PATH nor specify the path for X11BASE is awesome. The following applies to master and should work for Prima 1.52 and later releases. `unzip Prima-master.zip cd Prima-master perl Makefile.PL WITH_GTK2=0 make sudo make install` [download] Thank you, Dmitry. Prima now looks great on the Mac.	[reply] [d/l]
Re^3: Prima + MCE::Hobo demonstration by dk (Chaplain) on May 03, 2017 at 15:17 UTC
Hi Mario, On my Mac setup, you actually don't even need to say WITH_GTK2=0. /dk	[reply]
Re^4: Prima + MCE::Hobo demonstration by marioroy (Prior) on May 03, 2017 at 20:48 UTC

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