Multi Commander 6.4 Alpha 2

[Mathias (Author)]

Multi Commander 6.4 Alpha 2

Another Alpha release. Please test and report any issue around file system scanning and update of filesystem.

As said for Alpha1, the biggest change is the new file system scanning. and that is goes in the background.
read more it here

New in this Alpha is that the new file system scanning is now ON by default.
You have to opt-out of it in settings if you have any issue, then it uses the old way. (Before it was opt-in and some users missed that)

Also you can enable a new log tab, that log the filesystem scanning and such. However the log can be very talky.
so only enable it if you need to troubleshoot something.

Also the Alpha does not work on WinXP

When testing..
One thing to think about is that since the filesystem scanning is running in the background, there is a small time window
between when the filescanning is started and the UI is updated, and during this time the UI is not locked.
In most situations this time is so short so you will not notice it.
But you CAN (in theory) issue another command during that time (if you are really really fast.)
However most commands in the Explorer Panel is locked down during this period. But I might have missed some.
So if you notice that you can do anything strange, or something, Let me know.

(Btw FolderTree panel is NOT using this. It is still using the old blocking filesystem scanning.. So no need to report that )

Portable downlaods for v6.4.0.2199 ALPHA2
Portable - 64bit
Portable - 32bit

** If you test this release - Please report any issues you find around scanning the file system here or send me a mail **

[Matthias515566]

this new scanning method is extremely fast. The loading of tab layouts is now extremely fast and all is high performant. I tested it on several Notebooks some AMD and one Intel I5 and on my main-computer i installed the Alpha2 today over the integrated installation in Program Files and it works very well, no crashes.

[Mathias (Author)]

this new scanning method is extremely fast. The loading of tab layouts is now extremely fast and all is high performant. I tested it on several Notebooks some AMD and one Intel I5 and on my main-computer i installed the Alpha2 today over the integrated installation in Program Files and it works very well, no crashes.

Well the file scanning is actually not faster.  (The speed is actually limited by Windows and HW and drives. so even if the code is faster you will never notice , because even if the code is doing a lot it is till run in just a couple of milliseconds, if you take away all the wait time from the OS and HW )
BUT since everything is now run in the background in parallel without blocking the main UI, MC will start faster, specially if you have many tabs that is should open up.
since all the scanning is done in the background and not block UI and MC will show its UI much faster even if the content of the explorer panels are not loaded yet.

However this is a Alpha version.. There are some annoying bug. just be aware of strange behavior. It will most likely not crash.
One major issue I found is that if the filesystem is changed a lot while you browse in and out of a folder. It can happen that some file items might end up in the wrong cache inside MC,
so it look like some files are located in the parent folder, when in reality they are not. but a force refresh is fixing that.
But that issue will be fixed before beta..

[AlanJB]

Not hit the bug yet

So far, so good - let us know if any more specific testing needs doing to pinpoint the "annoying bugs".

Alan

[Mathias (Author)]

Not hit the bug yet

So far, so good - let us know if any more specific testing needs doing to pinpoint the "annoying bugs".

Alan

It is not easy to hit. but extremely bad when it does.

If you enter a folder that you previously visited so it is cached (in MC not OS). but it detected that folder was changed so it needed to rescan the filesystem.
after rescan it will update the UI cache and rebuild UI..  and there can be a slight delay of 20-40ms between scan is complete and update of UI cache.
and if the folder you are about to enter, is changed between the two steps during that time. it can result in that the cache item of the folder is kind of invalid and items are added to wrong cache, Since it is a very timing related issue it is not very easy to track down, It is not like I can run in debug mode and go step by step. there is only a small window of 20-40ms where it can happen.
But I think I have fix it now.. took the entire day to fix it..