ApexMods wrote:SMM won't show the embedded description once it has resorted to the generic MD5 hashing thing.
Both the hashes and metadata are determined in the background in advance. From the GUI thread's perspective, they either exist or they don't. There is no 'resorting' to hashing.
When you click on a mod in the list, one of the following will happen:
- You see the description associated with the pre-calculated hash from central catalog, or you see the pre-cached description (originally in the mod file itself). This is instantaneous.
. - If the hash has not yet been determined, or if metadata is absent from both the catalog and the cache at that moment, an error is shown, mentioning the pre-calculated hash (or null?).
.
That error also includes a date, which is determined on-demand in the GUI thread: by iterating over every file in the zip to find the most recent modified date. For large mods (40MB+), this can cause a brief noticable lag, but even then it should not be 10 seconds.
ApexMods wrote:The only way out is to do the re-scan all over again.
The delay occurs every time, even when the .zip has not been altered at all (and nothing needs to be re-cached).
That is strange.
Re-Scan should finish comparatively quickly, and do nothing the startup scan didn't already do (it'll hash a second time, but it won't bother recollecting metadata).
The Re-Scan menu item will be disabled until the startup scan has completed. At that point, all the hashes and metadata should already exist.
ApexMods wrote:Wait, so the fetching of metadata.xml contents [...]? I don't understand; that's just a couple of bytes of data, how can that take so long?
I imagine it has to do with interpreting the zip and searching for the metadata.
Not having done benchmarks, I could be mistaken, but as far as I remember, getting metadata's speed was comparable to blind hashing at best (both ~15 seconds for 1 gig of mods).
Part of my impression came from how long it takes to get that date for the error message, which is a similar search-but-don't-read-much operation. But for me, that was on the order of 2 seconds tops, not what you're experiencing.
ApexMods wrote:this concerns a rather large new mod under active development
ApexMods wrote:there actually is valid metadata present within the .zip file in question
ApexMods wrote:Yes, the UI remains fully responsive up until I try to select the large mod in question "too early".
Which mod are you referring to?
ApexMods wrote:Hope I'm explaining this correctly?
You're explaining your circumstance pretty well.
What you're explaining is puzzling.
When I come up with something, I'll PM you a test build.
Anything interesting in the modman-log.txt?