ThinkingRock Forum

You can significantly improve the speed of TR by including some Java options in the startup command - see explanation below.

E.g. To change the initial RAM allocation to 128MB and the maximum RAM allocation to 256MB include -Xms128m -Xmx256m

On Windows change the command to something like:

java -Xms128m -Xmx256m -jar "C:\Program Files\ThinkingRock\thinking-rock-win32-1.2.3.jar"

For mac you need to change the file:
ThinkingRock.app/Contents/MacOS/thinking-rock
to add the options - something like:

#!/bin/sh
BASEDIR=`dirname "$0"`
cd "$BASEDIR"
exec java -Xms128m -Xmx256m -Xdock:name="ThinkingRock" -Xdock:icon=../Resources/thinking-rock.icns -jar "$BASEDIR"/thinking-rock-macosx-1.2.3.jar


Explanation
By default Java allocates an initial and a maximum amount of RAM (memory) to use. When more RAM is required the garbage collector (GC) is run to try and free space and/or more RAM is allocated until the maximum is reached.

Since these (initial and maximum) amounts are quite small programs such as TR waste alot of time running the GC and allocating RAM.

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ThinkingRock Developer

How do I edit the file in mac? It dosn't let me open it with textedit.

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"The person who says it can't be done should not interrupt the person doing it."

It should do.

Right-click (or Control-click) the ThinkingRock.app and choose show package contents ...

Otherwise, could it be a file permission problem? Show Info on the thinkingrock script file and see if you have read and write access.

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ThinkingRock Developer

On my Linux system startup time has been decreased from ~8 sec. to ~6 sec.

After 60 startups you will have an extra 2 minutes to get something done

Anyway it should be a bit better.

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ThinkingRock Developer

For those of you, like me, using Windows and who have windows configured to 'execute' the JAR file, you need to change the options for the file type association.

Open Windows Explorer.
Go to Tools|Folder Options|File Types
Find and highlight JAR
Click on Advanced
Select the 'Open' option and click Edit
Edit the application path to include the flags Jeremy discussed before the -jar flag.
OK all the way out.
Robert, as the saying goes, is your Mother's Brother.

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Stuart

I'm slight;y confused about this. i edited the TR JAr application icon to Jeremy's modified command above. Is that not right?

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"The person who says it can't be done should not interrupt the person doing it."

It might be better if you wait for a grown up to tell you. I can just about spell Java; after that I'm lost. However, my impression was that that wouldn't work. Of course, if you are seening an improvement then I guess I was wrong.

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Stuart

I don't think I am seeing an improvement. Where would I put the new command using your method? Assume I am 4 years old.

This is current string in Edit Executable file typr JAR:

"C:\Program Files\java\jre1.5.0_11\bin\javaw.exe" -jar"%1"%*

What should that become?

Remember, I'm 4 years old...

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"The person who says it can't be done should not interrupt the person doing it."

"C:\Program Files\java\jre1.5.0_11\bin\javaw.exe" -Xms128m -Xmx256m -jar "%1" %*

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Stuart

mmm, seems to take even longer to load! I wonder if I need to reset the command line of the actual application to what it was.

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"The person who says it can't be done should not interrupt the person doing it."

Odd. It is much quicker to load here.

Can't hurt; I didn't change mine at all.

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Stuart

There's an enormous amount of hard disk activity, even after I quit it, and it has slowed everything else up. maybe something else is going on.

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"The person who says it can't be done should not interrupt the person doing it."

I notice that you're using 1.5.0_11;I'm using _09 so I don't know if there is anything between the versions that could be making a difference.

I suggest rebooting and starting TR using your new cmd line immediately after everything has started. See if there is a difference, for the better or worse. If things aren't better then try setting things back to the way they were and reboot and try again.

Failing that you really are going to have to wait for a grown up I should imagine Jeremy is tucked up in bed by now.

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Stuart

How much RAM do you have in your system? I'm guessing that you have say 256 or 512 MB ?

What you are seeing is your other programs' memory being paged out to the swap file to free enough memory for TR.

If you have a low amount of RAM you should probably not use this speed enhancement. The enhancement trades memory for speed, but that only works if you have spare memory to trade.