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Analysis of FLAC – Stage Two of Three – SPO600 Project

Hello and welcome to my blog!

In this blog post, I will be writing about my final project for my software portability and optimization class SPO 600. In this post, I will review the work I have done with the FLAC project. If you didn’t read the first post in this series, you could find it here. A quick review of the last post, for my SPO 600 class, I got tasked with finding and optimizing an open-source project. Knowing I wanted to work with audio, I found the open-source project called FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec). On further investigation, I made a plan on how to optimize the FLAC library. In this blog post, I will go over the implementation and results of my optimization.

Execution of my plan:

In the previous blog post, I laid out a strategy for the completion of my optimization. It turned out to be quite helpful. I was able to follow it, and I completed the optimization just as planned. Below is the strategy I made and some notes on how I completed each task.

  1. Research the required pre-processor directives that I will need to run the Aarch64 code inside the FLAC library conditionally.
    Through reading the FLAC code, I was able to determine that the pre-processor directive used in this project really on global variables defined by the configure script. After reading the “configure.ac” file, online AutoTools documentation and the “configure.ac” file from the OPUS project, which is also created by Xiph, the same people who created the FLAC project. I was able to determine how to check if the user has an aarch64 CPU and if the intrinsic library arm-neon is available. After confirming that I am on an aarch64 machine, I define “FLAC__CPU_AARCH64,” and after confirming arm-neon intrinsic are possible, I define “FLAC__HAS_NEONINTRIN.”
  2. Test the pre-processor directives with some code that will cause a fault, so I know it is working.
    Since the FLAC project has some optimizations for other platforms, I needed to follow the same pattern as the previous people. To test the preprocessor directives, I had to add the new architecture to the function selection logic. To add the new architecture, I added code to “src/libFLAC/cpu.c”, “src/libFLAC/include/private/cpu.h”, “src/libFLAC/include/private/lpc.h” and “src/libFLAC/stream_encoder.c.” Once I had the architecture function selection logic done, I was ready to test. I did not end up needing to cause any faults to confirm that the preprocessor directives were working. Instead, I used a printf statement and a copy of the vanilla C code version of the auto-correlation function. In running the program, I was able to see the printf messages, and I also used perf to confirm I was using the new function.
  3. Examine the codebase to know where precisely I need to put the pre-processor directives. And check if I need to mess with the build instructions.
    I ended up doing this in step in steps one and two since the FLAC project didn’t use pre-defined variables for the pre-processor directives. Instead, the FLAC project uses variables defined by the configure script. And I had to examine the codebase and implement the changes to run a test.
  4. Configure the makefile to build the new file that I am adding.
    I added one file to the project called lpc_intrin_neon.c. So for the compiler to build it, I put it into the list of source files inside “src/libFLAC/Makefile.am.”
  5. I am going to focus on the “FLAC__lpc_compute_autocorrelation” function, and I am going to translate it into aarch64 intrinsic’s. I will use the existing c and x86 intrinsic code to help me with the translation.
    Success! It took some time, but I was able to translate the x86 code into aarch64. The way I did this was by using the Intel and arm-neon online documentation. I also got help by googling a specific x86 intrinsic and asking what arm-neon instruction does the same thing or similar. For a few intrinsics, there was no direct replacement. Specifically, there is no shuffle in arm-neon, so I had to read up on how shuffle worked on x86 and execute that using multiple arm-neon instruction. I ended up creating inline functions for the shuffles to make writing the code more manageable and cleaner.
  6. Testing my optimization, I will re-run the test that I performed on the original code with my optimized version and see if I have improved the performance on the aarch64 platform.
    I tested with two aarch64 machines. The first machine has a faster single-thread performance with 8 threads. The second machine has 24 threads but slower single-thread performance. On the first machine, initially, the autocorrelation function took 26.11 percent of the runtime. After the optimizations, the autocorrelation function took 12.64 percent of the time. On the second machine, initially, the autocorrelation function took 52.41 percent of the runtime. After the optimizations, the autocorrelation function took 14.78 percent of the time. I also tested the optimizations on an x86 machine to confirm that the changes did not affect that architecture.
  7. As a stretch goal, depending on how hard it is to write the Aarch64 intrinsics, I would like to translate the full “ipc.c” file with aarch64 intrinsics.
    I didn’t end up translating the full “ipc.c” file, but I did translate all versions of the autocorrelation function. There are four versions of the autocorrelation function. Depending on how much lag it will call the correct version, either lag 4, lag 8, lag 12 or lag 16.

Full Results:

The following results are not averaged, but I did run theses test multiple times with similar results. The numbers below are from a few of the many tests I performed.

Aaarch64 Machine 1:

TOTAL RUNTIME OF THE TEST BEFORE OPTIMIZATION:

real    0m51.784s
user    0m49.356s
sys     0m2.349s

TOTAL RUNTIME OF THE TEST AFTER OPTIMIZATION:

real    0m43.503s
user    0m40.950s
sys     0m2.470s

PERF REPORT BEFORE OPTIMIZATION (First 20 Lines):

To display the perf.data header info, please use --header/--header-only options.
 #
 #
 Total Lost Samples: 0
 #
 Samples: 208K of event 'cycles:u'
 Event count (approx.): 98509947650
 #
 Overhead  Command   Shared Object           Symbol
 ……..  ……..  ………………….  ………………………………………………………………………………..
 #
     26.11%  lt-flac   libFLAC.so.8.3.0        [.] FLAC__lpc_compute_autocorrelation
     25.54%  lt-flac   libFLAC.so.8.3.0        [.] FLAC__fixed_compute_best_predictor_wide
     11.35%  lt-flac   libFLAC.so.8.3.0        [.] FLAC__bitwriter_write_rice_signed_block
      9.45%  lt-flac   libFLAC.so.8.3.0        [.] FLAC__MD5Transform
      5.95%  lt-flac   lt-flac                 [.] format_input
      5.60%  lt-flac   libFLAC.so.8.3.0        [.] FLAC__lpc_compute_residual_from_qlp_coefficients_wide
      3.42%  lt-flac   libFLAC.so.8.3.0        [.] precompute_partition_info_sums_
      2.34%  lt-flac   libFLAC.so.8.3.0        [.] FLAC__MD5Accumulate
      2.21%  lt-flac   libFLAC.so.8.3.0        [.] FLAC__crc16

PERF REPORT AFTER OPTIMIZATION (First 20 Lines): 

To display the perf.data header info, please use --header/--header-only options.
 #
 #
 Total Lost Samples: 0
 #
 Samples: 175K of event 'cycles:u'
 Event count (approx.): 81871492155
 #
 Overhead  Command  Shared Object       Symbol
 ……..  …….  ………………  ………………………………………………………………………………..
 #
     30.58%  lt-flac  libFLAC.so.8.3.0    [.] FLAC__fixed_compute_best_predictor_wide
     13.36%  lt-flac  libFLAC.so.8.3.0    [.] FLAC__bitwriter_write_rice_signed_block
     12.64%  lt-flac  libFLAC.so.8.3.0    [.] FLAC__lpc_compute_autocorrelation_intrin_neon_lag_12
     11.71%  lt-flac  libFLAC.so.8.3.0    [.] FLAC__MD5Transform
      7.16%  lt-flac  lt-flac             [.] format_input
      5.18%  lt-flac  libFLAC.so.8.3.0    [.] FLAC__lpc_compute_residual_from_qlp_coefficients_wide
      4.16%  lt-flac  libFLAC.so.8.3.0    [.] precompute_partition_info_sums_
      3.00%  lt-flac  libFLAC.so.8.3.0    [.] FLAC__MD5Accumulate
      2.62%  lt-flac  libFLAC.so.8.3.0    [.] FLAC__crc16

Aaarch64 Machine 2:

TOTAL RUNTIME OF THE TEST BEFORE OPTIMIZATION:

real    3m43.841s
user    3m33.558s
sys     0m8.791s

TOTAL RUNTIME OF THE TEST AFTER OPTIMIZATION: 

real    2m3.675s
user    1m54.260s
sys     0m8.588s

PERF REPORT BEFORE OPTIMIZATION (First 20 Lines): 

To display the perf.data header info, please use --header/--header-only options.
 #
 #
 Total Lost Samples: 0
 #
 Samples: 901K of event 'cycles:uppp'
 Event count (approx.): 213328075836
 #
 Overhead  Command  Shared Object     Symbol
 ……..  …….  …………….  ………………………………………………………………………………..
 #
     52.41%  lt-flac  libFLAC.so.8.3.0  [.] FLAC__lpc_compute_autocorrelation
     11.36%  lt-flac  libFLAC.so.8.3.0  [.] FLAC__fixed_compute_best_predictor_wide
      6.62%  lt-flac  libFLAC.so.8.3.0  [.] FLAC__bitwriter_write_rice_signed_block
      5.80%  lt-flac  libFLAC.so.8.3.0  [.] FLAC__MD5Transform
      4.35%  lt-flac  lt-flac           [.] format_input
      4.05%  lt-flac  libFLAC.so.8.3.0  [.] FLAC__lpc_compute_residual_from_qlp_coefficients_wide
      2.69%  lt-flac  libFLAC.so.8.3.0  [.] precompute_partition_info_sums_
      2.52%  lt-flac  libFLAC.so.8.3.0  [.] FLAC__MD5Accumulate
      2.10%  lt-flac  libFLAC.so.8.3.0  [.] FLAC__fixed_compute_residual

PERF REPORT AFTER OPTIMIZATION (First 20 Lines): 

To display the perf.data header info, please use --header/--header-only options.
 #
 #
 Total Lost Samples: 0
 #
 Samples: 620K of event 'cycles:uppp'
 Event count (approx.): 144725968757
 #
 Overhead  Command  Shared Object     Symbol
 ……..  …….  …………….  ………………………………………………………………………………..
 #
     15.03%  lt-flac  libFLAC.so.8.3.0  [.] FLAC__fixed_compute_best_predictor_wide
     14.78%  lt-flac  libFLAC.so.8.3.0  [.] FLAC__lpc_compute_autocorrelation_intrin_neon_lag_12
     10.06%  lt-flac  libFLAC.so.8.3.0  [.] FLAC__bitwriter_write_rice_signed_block
     10.03%  lt-flac  libFLAC.so.8.3.0  [.] FLAC__lpc_compute_residual_from_qlp_coefficients_wide
      9.14%  lt-flac  libFLAC.so.8.3.0  [.] FLAC__lpc_window_data
      9.09%  lt-flac  libFLAC.so.8.3.0  [.] precompute_partition_info_sums_
      8.07%  lt-flac  libFLAC.so.8.3.0  [.] FLAC__MD5Transform
      6.14%  lt-flac  libFLAC.so.8.3.0  [.] FLAC__fixed_compute_residual
      5.68%  lt-flac  lt-flac           [.] format_input

Code Changes:

On GitHub, I created a pull request inside my fork of FLAC HERE. With this pull request, you will be able to see exactly all the code changes I made to the FLAC project.

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Analysis of FLAC – Stage One of Three – SPO600 Project

Hello and welcome to my blog!

In this blog post, I will be writing about my final project for SPO600. The goal of this project is to optimize an open-source library. To complete the project, I had to choose one of the following tasks: alter build options, code changes to permit better optimization by the compiler, algorithm improvements or In-line assembler.

What I did to find an Open-source project:

For a long time, I have been working with audio as a hobby. I actively produced music, mix live bands, calibrate PA speakers and play drums. So, after completing the lab about changing the volume of sound, I knew I wanted to work with audio. So, I started at an open-source project that I knew about that works with audio called Audacity. Audacity is an open-source DAW (Digital Audio Workstation.) I looked around the Audacity project source for a bit then decided to dig into its dependencies. I got the idea of looking at the dependencies from my professor. He suggested to everyone that a library would be a great place to find an opportunity to optimize some code. In looking at the Audacity dependencies, I found the library called FLAC by Xiph. FLAC is an acronym that means Free Lossless Audio Codec. Similar to what I did with Audacity, I started looking at the source code. The way I navigated the source code was by using the search on GitHub and the Find command on bash. I was looking for architecture-specific code, so my search’s were like “x86” or “aarch64”. Between searching for keywords and browsing the folders, I found a file that was called “cpu.c” in “src/libFLAC,” and inside, I was able to determine that the FLAC project has not yet been optimized for Aarch64. The way I discovered that the FLAC project has yet to be optimized for Aarch64 was by looking at the compiler preprocessing directives. Inside that file, I could see that this project has optimizations for the x86, IA32 and PPC architectures, but not for Aarch64. After learning that the FLAC project has not been optimized for Aarch64, I submitted an Issue on GitHub. Here is a link to the issue I created: Issue #156. Inside the issue, I inquired to the maintainers of the FLAC project if they were open to me, adding some optimizations for Aarch64. One of the maintainers of the FLAC project responded and is open to me, adding Aarch64 support to the FLAC project. Now that I got approval to work on this repo, I could now start on my benchmarking.

Benchmarking the FLAC project:

Step one to benchmarking the FLAC project was building the projects on both x86 and Aarch64. I downloaded the source code from the FLAC GitHub, so the first step to building the library was to run the “autogen.sh” script. Which created my “./configure” script. I then ran the configure script with the “-pg” command to allow gprof, so my configuration command was “./configure CFLAGS=”-g -pg -O2″ CXXFLAGS=”-g -pg -O2″.” I was then able to use “make -j” to build the code. Unfortunately, I could not get gporf working with the main FLAC binary. It would only send garbage data to the “gprof.out” file. Though I did get gprof working with some of the tests that were included with the source code, so I know the “-pg” worked. I ended up switching to perf for my profiling. I ran Make clean and then re-ran Configure so I could use perf. “./configure CFLAGS=”-g -O2″ CXXFLAGS=”-g -O2″ .” After doing that, I grabbed my test data and ran perf record. The command I used to test with is “src/flac/flac input.wav” this command runs FLAC and passes a wave file to it. For my sizable test data, I took one of the live multitrack recordings that I had on my computer and exported the mix to a stereo wave file. The test wave file is 1 hour and 31 minutes long and is 1.57 gigabytes.

Using Perf:

Perf did a fantastic job of helping me find what I want to optimize for this project. The part of FLAC that I tested was the encoding, specifically “.wav” encoding to “.flac.” I ran the same test file on the two different architectures, and the performance difference was noticeable instantly. On the x86 machine, it will run the encoding in 16.439s. And the Aarch64 machine took 4minutes and 39.585s. (These times are from one of the tests I did. I ran the test multiple times with similar results.) I then took a look at the perf report.

Perf Report:

In analyzing the perf reports, I was able to narrow down where I should target my optimizations. You can see from the following snippets of the perf report that on the Aarch64 architecture, the function called “FLAC__lpc_compute_autocorrelation” is taking about 49.64% of the run time. Versus, on the x86 report it uses an intrinsic version of that function called “FLAC__lpc_compute_autocorrelation_intrin_sse_lag_12_new” which significantly improves the performance. On the x86 machine, this function only took 7.25% of the run time. The vanilla c code in which the Aarch64 machine is running is located inside the file “ipc.c.” The Intrinsic code the x86 machine is running is located inside the file “ipc_intin_sse.c.” These files are located in the “src/libFLAC” folder. 

aarch64
# Samples: 1M of event 'cycles:uppp'
# Event count (approx.): 255896905943
#
# Overhead  Command  Shared Object       Symbol
# ........  .......  ..................  ............................................................................................
    49.64%  lt-flac  libFLAC.so.8.3.0    [.] FLAC__lpc_compute_autocorrelation
     8.54%  lt-flac  libFLAC.so.8.3.0    [.] FLAC__fixed_compute_best_predictor_wide
     7.08%  lt-flac  libFLAC.so.8.3.0    [.] FLAC__lpc_compute_residual_from_qlp_coefficients_wide
     5.65%  lt-flac  libFLAC.so.8.3.0    [.] FLAC__bitwriter_write_rice_signed_block
     5.19%  lt-flac  libFLAC.so.8.3.0    [.] FLAC__lpc_window_data
     5.14%  lt-flac  libFLAC.so.8.3.0    [.] precompute_partition_info_sums_
     4.54%  lt-flac  libFLAC.so.8.3.0    [.] FLAC__MD5Transform


x86
# Samples: 61K of event 'cycles:u'
# Event count (approx.): 52656457012
#
# Overhead  Command  Shared Object       Symbol                                                                                      
# ........  .......  ..................  ............................................................................................
#
    20.02%  lt-flac  libFLAC.so.8.3.0    [.] FLAC__fixed_compute_best_predictor_wide_intrin_ssse3
    16.78%  lt-flac  libFLAC.so.8.3.0    [.] FLAC__bitwriter_write_rice_signed_block
    16.44%  lt-flac  libFLAC.so.8.3.0    [.] FLAC__MD5Transform
     7.43%  lt-flac  lt-flac             [.] format_input
     7.25%  lt-flac  libFLAC.so.8.3.0    [.] FLAC__lpc_compute_autocorrelation_intrin_sse_lag_12_new
     7.17%  lt-flac  libFLAC.so.8.3.0    [.] FLAC__lpc_compute_residual_from_qlp_coefficients_wide_intrin_avx2
     5.44%  lt-flac  libFLAC.so.8.3.0    [.] FLAC__fixed_compute_residual
     4.17%  lt-flac  libFLAC.so.8.3.0    [.] FLAC__MD5Accumulate

Strategy:

In reviewing the benchmarks and the code, I have narrowed down the strategy I will be doing to complete the project. Here is the list of steps I came up with to optimize the encoding of FLAC for aarch64.

  1. Research the required pre-processor directives that I will need to run the Aarch64 code inside the FLAC library conditionally.
  2. Test the pre-processor directives with some code that will cause a fault, so I know it is working.
  3. Examine the codebase to know where precisely I need to put the pre-processor directives. And check if I need to mess with the build instructions.
  4. Configure the makefile to build the new file that I am adding.
  5. I am going to focus on the “FLAC__lpc_compute_autocorrelation” function, and I am going to translate it into aarch64 intrinsic’s. I will use the existing c and x86 intrinsic code to help me with the translation.
  6. Testing my optimization, I will re-run the test that I performed on the original code with my optimized version and see if I have improved the performance on the aarch64 platform.
  7. As a stretch goal, depending on how hard it is to write the Aarch64 intrinsics, I would like to translate the full “ipc.c” file with aarch64 intrinsics.

Results To This Point:

At this point, I have found a project to work on, started learning the project structure, did research on how to use the package, I successfully built the package on both x86 and Aarch64 and performed benchmarks on the project using gprof, perf and the bash time command on both platforms. For my optimization, I have narrowed down exactly what I am going to work on for the remainder of this project and created a plan for how I will accomplish those changes.

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Writing In Assembler x86 and aarch64 – Lab3 SP0600

Hello,

In this post, I am talking about how I am furthering my understanding of computers, so I can understand how I can properly optimize software. I am writing about learning how to write assembler code on the x86 and aarch64 platform for my software optimization class lab.

To complete this lab I performed the following tasks :

  1. Build and run the three C versions of the program for x86_64.
    Take a look at the differences in the code.
  2. Use the objdump -d command to dump (print) the object code (machine code) and disassemble it into assembler for each of the binaries. Find the section and take a look at the code. Notice the total amount of code.
  3. Review, build and run the x86_64 assembly language programs. Take a look at the code using objdump -d objectfile and compare it to the source code. Notice the absence of other code (compared to the C binary, which had a lot of extra code).
  4. Build and run the three C versions of the program for aarch64. Verify that you can disassemble the object code in the ELF binary using objdump -d objectfile and take a look at the code
  5. Review, build and run the aarch64 assembly language programs. Take a look at the code using objdump -d objectfile and compare it to the source code.
  6. Make a loop from 0 to 9, on x86 and aarch64
  7. Extend the code to loop from 00-30, printing each value as a 2-digit decimal number, on x86 and aarch64

How I used a Makefile

Since this lab required testing, reviewing, creating and running many files I decided to load everything into a Makefile.

In doing this I learned that I can call Makefiles in other folders.
The way I did that was by adding a target to the main Makefile and typing in “cd /route/to/makefile && make all”

In the attached folders you can see the Makefile I created.

Task 1

The three c programs all perform the same task of printing “Hello World!”, but they do it in 3 different ways.

Program 1: Uses printf()
Program 2: Uses write()
Program 3: Uses syscall()

Task 2

After Reviewing the output of the objdump I can see that program 1 uses the least amount of code at 8 lines but it is using printf which has the most overhead of the three functions. Program 2 using write which should have less overhead uses 12 lines of code. And finally program 3 also uses 12 lines of code and since we are using a syscall we have very little overhead.

Task 3

Yes, Since we are now compiling straight from assembler we don’t have the overhead of the c language. This cut the program down in size drastically now the how objdump file is only 11 lines of code.

Task 4

Here is the total line count the three c programs took to run on aarch64. Pretty similar results.

Program 1: 10 lines
Program 2: 12 lines
Program 3: 12 lines

Task 5

Surprisingly, the results are identical to the x86 in term of line count. The aarch64 Hello world program used 11 lines of code the same as x86.

Something interesting I noticed about the compiled code is that it transformed all the numbers to hexadecimal.

Task 6

Here is my loops 0-9 on x86 and aarch64.

/* x86 */
.text
.globl    _start

start = 0                       /* starting value for the loop index; note that this is a symbol (constant), not a variable */
max = 10                        /* loop exits when the index hits this number (loop condition is i<max) */

_start:
    mov     $start,%r15         /* loop index */
   
loop:
    /* ... body of the loop ... do something useful here ... */
    mov     $len,%rdx
    
    mov     $48,%r14
    add     %r15,%r14
    
    movb    %r14b,msg+6
    mov     $msg,%rsi

    mov     $1,%rdi
    mov     $1,%rax
    syscall 

    inc     %r15                /* increment index */
    cmp     $max,%r15           /* see if we're done */
    jne     loop                /* loop if we're not */

    mov     $0,%rdi             /* exit status */
    mov     $60,%rax            /* syscall sys_exit */
    syscall
.data 
msg: .ascii "Loop:  \n"
    len = . - msg
/* aarch64 */
.text
.globl    _start

start = 0                       /* starting value for the loop index; note that this is a symbol (constant), not a variable */
max = 10                        /* loop exits when the index hits this number (loop condition is i<max) */

_start:
    mov     x30,start           /* loop index */
    
loop:
    
    mov     x19,48
    mov     x26,max
    mov     x27,1
    adr     x28,msg

    add     x19,x30,x19

    strb     w19,[x28,6]
    ldr      x1,=msg
        
    mov     x0,1
    mov     x2,len
    mov     x8, 64
    svc     0

    add     x30,x27,x30             /* increment index */
    cmp     x26,x30                 /* see if we're done */
    b.ne    loop                   /* loop if we're not */

    mov     x8,93                   /* syscall sys_exit */
    svc     0

    .data

    msg: .ascii "Loop:      \n"
    len = . - msg

Task 7

Here is my loops 0-30 with the leading zero’s removed on x86 and aarch64. 

/* x86 */
.text
.globl    _start

start = 0                       /* starting value for the loop index; note that this is a symbol (constant), not a variable */
max = 31                        /* loop exits when the index hits this number (loop condition is i<max) */

_start:
    mov     $start,%r15         /* loop index */
    
loop:
    /* ... body of the loop ... do something useful here ... */
    
   
    mov     $48,%r13
    mov     $48,%r14
    mov     $0,%rdx

    mov     %r15,%rax
    mov     $10,%r12
    div     %r12

    
    add     %rax,%r13
    add     %rdx,%r14
    
    cmp     $48,%r13                   /*Compare*/
    
    je continue     
    
    movb    %r13b,msg+6

continue:

    movb    %r14b,msg+7
    mov     $msg,%rsi /*send message to reg rsi*/
        
    mov     $1,%rdi
    mov     $1,%rax
    mov     $len,%rdx

    syscall

    inc     %r15                /* increment index */
    cmp     $max,%r15           /* see if we're done */
    jne     loop                /* loop if we're not */

    mov     $0,%rdi             /* exit status */
    mov     $60,%rax            /* syscall sys_exit */
    syscall

    .data

    msg: .ascii "Loop:   \n"
    len = . - msg
/* aarch64 */
.text
.globl    _start

start = 0                       /* starting value for the loop index; note that this is a symbol (constant), not a variable */
max = 30                        /* loop exits when the index hits this number (loop condition is i<max) */

_start:
    mov     x30,start           /* loop index */
    
loop:
    
    mov     x19,48
    mov     x20,48
    mov     x24,10  
    mov     x25,48
    mov     x26,max
    mov     x27,1
    adr     x28,msg

    
    udiv    x21,x30,x24
    msub    x22,x21,x24,x30

    add     x19,x21,x19
    add     x20,x22,x20

    cmp     x25,x19
    b.eq    continue     
    
    strb     w19,[x28,6]

continue:

    strb     w20,[x28,7]
    ldr      x1,=msg
        
    mov     x0,1
    mov     x2,len
    mov     x8, 64
    svc     0

    add     x30,x27,x30             /* increment index */
    cmp     x26,x30                 /* see if we're done */
    b.ne    loop                   /* loop if we're not */

    mov     x8,93                   /* syscall sys_exit */
    svc     0

    .data

    msg: .ascii "Loop:      \n"
    len = . - msg

Download my files

lab03_FilesDownload
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Hacktoberfest 2018 – My experience

Hacktoberfest 2018, was a great learning experience for me. I was able to find a great project for this event, that fit my interest’s and ability’s.

Starting this event was a bit challenging, I knew I wanted to work with something with java script. And I also, wanted to work on more front end development. So this helped me narrow down what project to work on, picking a project to work on took some time. After looking through the Hacktoberfest tag on GitHub for a while I came across the Node Chat app that was using node and socket IO to create a chat app. The owner of the project wanted to recreate the test site using react. This peaked my interest, since I was familiar with react, node and socketIO,  so I took on the task of creating this react site for my first pull request for Hacktoberfest 2018.

After my first PR on the Node Chat I asked to continue working on the react app. The owner of the app invited me to be a maintainer for this project. So, for the rest of Hacktoberfest I worked on bugs and features of the react app.

My Hacktoberfest 2018 Pull Requests and Issues

  1. https://github.com/joshghent/NodeChat/issues/11
    https://github.com/joshghent/NodeChat/pull/24
  2. https://github.com/OTRChat/NodeChat/pull/27
  3. https://github.com/OTRChat/NodeChat/pull/28
  4. https://github.com/OTRChat/NodeChat/pull/29
  5. https://github.com/OTRChat/NodeChat/issues/1
    https://github.com/OTRChat/NodeChat/pull/30

Overall, I had a very positive experience in Hacktoberfest 2018. I learned allot about git, especially using branches. I now use branches all the time for whenever I want to test something or work on a issue or feature. And after making 5 PR’s I am much more comfortable with the process.

Now that I know events like Hacktoberfest exist, I am definitely going to keep an eye out for them, in the future.

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Hacktoberfest – Bug Fixes and Styling in NodeChat app.

For my 3rd and 4th pull request of Hacktoberfest, I didn’t work on much new technology, like in my previous pull request’s. Instead I thought I would fix a bug that was added during the move from a jQuery site to a React site. And I added some styling to the messages on the NodeChat app.

PR #3 

In the original jQuery site the original creator designed it to display a greeting message when a user logs in. From testing the original site, the greeting message only displayed the first time someone logged in. This is were the React app had a bug, it would always display the greeting message when you enter the chat.

In order to fix this bug I needed to have the idea of a previous user inside the chat page component. I was able to do this by creating a Boolean inside the login page and sending that over to the chat page through props. This allowed my to conditionally show the greeting message.

 

PR #4

Since the chat app can handle more then just 2 people at a time, I wanted to show who is sending each message. I was already receiving the username of the sender so it wasn’t technically that hard to get the username to display. Their was a bug in receiving the username but it was quick to fix.

The more involved part of this PR was probably all the CSS required to make the messages look nice.

Here’s a picture of the end result:

 

 

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Hacktoberfest Week Two – React and Push.js

In this week of Hacktoberfest, I added push notifications to the Node Chat project in my most recent Pull request. I used the Push.js library in order to accomplish this task. Well learning how to do this, I din’t find much documentation on using Push.js with React so I put together a small tutorial for today’s blog.

Integrating Push.js with React

Natively, there is currently no solution to use Push.js with React. In order to use Push.js with react you have to use it as an external libraries. Below is how I added Push.js to React as an external library.

First step:

Include the script file in the main “index.html” file for your app.

I used a CDN to do this:

<script type="text/javascript" src="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/push.js/1.0.7/push.min.js"></script>

Second step:

Import Push.js into your file.

Put the following line at the top of the .js file you want to use Push.js in.

import * as Push from "push.js";

After importing Push.js you can now create push notifications inside your react app.

Here’s an example of how to create a notification in a react component.

notify(){
 Push.create("Hello world!", {
     body: "Thanks for reading my Blog!",
     timeout: 5000,
     onClick: function () {
         window.focus();
         this.close();
     }
 });
}