[Opensim-dev] Script engine base functional merge - Dot Net Engine

[Rhian]

Hi All,

I apologize up ahead for possibly making remarks that seem not
in-depth, I'm not a developer, I'm following this list purely out of
curiosity and hoping to learn something from all of you. I admire all
the efforts you put in and am grateful to each and everyone who
contributes her/his time to this great project.

I have tested XEngine on my "production" machine at revision 6090. Now
before I go into details, let me explain that I'm just renting a *very
cheap* vps server to experiment with and connect to OSGrid with.
This one is really the bottom end of what you can run OpenSim on,
capable of just one region if you don't fully load it with prims and
scripts. I decided I wanted to see what it's like and I hooked up 2
regions in this simulator.

So far it's been a great experience and I am glad I can really test
out things. Currently there isn't much in the primary region, prim
count is now at 402, script count 26. Which is nothing. There is one
other region running in this sim too, but that is just "decoration",
it's an almost empty island with 15 prims and one script that sets the
parameters of a texture on a prim. (Rippling water to be specific).
If I look on the backside, my core OS part (Debian lenny/sid) runs on
40Mb of memory (yes, that is including mysqld!).
When I startup OpenSim.exe with ODE, Meshmerizer and DotNetScripting,
I use around 180Mb in total (including the 40Mb OS).
At revision 6090 I decided to test out the XEngine after seeing the
changes in the svn log.
Shock-horror, the simulator didn't even wanted to start! It ran out of
memory whilst compiling the scripts.

Now we're at revision 6121:
total memory with DNE 176Mb, total memory with XEngine: 223Mb (*) or 167Mb

(*) Note: twice I had a memory usage of 223Mb after startup (and the
scripts were done), 8 times I had 167Mb. On DNE it averages around
176Mb give or take 4Mb. These figures reflect only startup! No
Avatar-agents in the regions. 20 minute stabilizing time. (To allow
strange hiccups in the load (db or otherwise) to re-arrange itself).

So, looking from the OS-side, it seems that XEngine is more sufficient
now in memory usage...
And I don't see a difference in compatibility either...
[ScriptEngine.DotNetEngine]: Allowed languages: lsl,cs,js,vb
.XEngine [Compiler]: Allowed languages: lsl,vb,js,cs

So stick with XEngine? Yes, in my humble opinion, and I'm sure that
Kurt isn't really waiting for extra work that doesn't get used in the
end.

I know I sometimes have the tendency to elaborate too much on my
thoughts, but I thought that it might be the right moment to explain
how I'm running things. I'm just a "private" person, low budget, but
very interested and keen on helping out testing. :-) My
"infrastructure" consists of just one vps machine (which might become
a dedicated one soon) connected to OSGrid; several different aged
machines running mostly Debian lenny/sid (due to OS efficiency on
*old* hardware) and some XP, forming a mini grid at home.
Most of the time I write these kind of things at work (including some
bug reporting), I work full time, have also a family with 2 children,
so time is rather limited, but I hope I can make a little difference.
:-)
I wish I could "work" on it full time somehow, but I guess that will
remain a dream.

Best wishes,
Rhian
(aka Dutchie & Reena Bismuth)