spark in Project Infinity 0.1

spark is a performance profiler for Minecraft clients, servers and proxies. It doesn't add blocks, items or machines. It helps you find out why your game or server is lagging.^[1]

What it does

• CPU Profiler: diagnoses performance issues such as lag, low tick rate and high CPU usage. It is described as lightweight, needing no configuration or setup, and running for about 30 seconds is enough to give useful results.^[1]
• Memory Inspection: tools for memory problems, including a heap summary, a full heap dump and garbage collection monitoring.^[1]
• Server Health Reporting: tracks TPS, tick durations, CPU usage, memory usage and disk usage. It can also report whenever a single tick takes longer than a threshold you set.^[1]

The profiler works by sampling statistical data about system activity and building a call graph from it. The call graph is then shown in an online viewer so you can analyse it.^[1]

In this pack

The pack includes spark 1.10.53 (the Forge build). It was first included in version 0.0.48.0 or earlier.^[2]

The pack's quest book has no quest for this mod, so there is nothing before or after it to follow. Don't confuse it with the Sparks quest in the Botania chapter (group Production, chapter 27 of 44). That quest asks for Spark x2, an item from Botania, and it comes after Mana-infused items.^[3]

The Botania chapter also has a Spark Augments quest, "Spark Augments" quest, which comes after Alfheim resources. It belongs to the Botania questline too.^[3]

spark is a performance profiler for Minecraft clients, servers and proxies. It helps you find out why a world lags, so your first steps are about reading what it tells you, not crafting anything.^[1]

What spark gives you

• CPU Profiler: diagnoses performance issues like lag, low tick rate and high CPU usage.^[1]
• Memory Inspection: tools for diagnosing memory issues, including a heap summary, a full heap dump and garbage collection monitoring.^[1]
• Server Health Reporting: metrics such as TPS (ticks per second, shown to a more accurate degree by the /tps command), tick durations, CPU usage, memory usage and disk usage.^[1]

The profiler needs no configuration or setup, you just install it. Running it for around 30 seconds is enough to give useful insights into problem areas. It builds a call graph from sampled data, and the result is shown in an online viewer.^[1]

How the pack sets it up

The pack ships a small config for spark. In backgroundProfiler the value is set to false. The file is set to an empty list.^[4][5]

Unverified No in-pack recipes or items for spark were found in the sources, so there is no recipe block here. The exact commands to start a profile in this pack are also unverified.

Same as in the All the Mods 10: To the Sky 2.0.4 guide

spark works differently from most mods you'll meet in a modpack. It's a performance profiler for Minecraft clients, servers and proxies, so this section covers how its diagnostic tools work, not machines, power or automation.^[1]

It's made up of three separate components: a CPU profiler, memory inspection tools and server health reporting. Install it by adding the jar to the mods directory.^[1]

CPU profiler

The profiler is for diagnosing performance problems such as lag, low tick rate and high CPU usage. It works by sampling statistical data about system activity and building a call graph from it. That graph is then shown in an online viewer, where you can analyse it as a simple tree structure. The viewer can also apply deobfuscation mappings.^[1]

The project page describes the profiler like this:^[1]

• Lightweight: it can be run in production with minimal impact.^[1]
• Easy to use: no configuration or setup is necessary, you just install it.^[1]
• Quick: running for about 30 seconds is enough to give useful insight into problem areas.^[1]
• Customisable: you can target specific threads, sample at a specific interval, or record only "laggy" periods.^[1]

Profiler engines

There are two profiler engines. The first uses native AsyncGetCallTrace and perf_events through async-profiler, and it's only available on Linux x86_64 systems. The second uses the built-in Java ThreadMXBean, an improved version of the WarmRoast profiler by sk89q.^[1]

Memory inspection

For memory problems, spark includes three tools:^[1]

• Heap Summary: a basic snapshot of the server's memory. It shows memory usage and instance counts for each class in the JVM's heap. It's not meant to replace proper memory analysis tools.^[1]
• Heap Dump: a full HPROF snapshot of the JVM's heap, optionally compressed. You can inspect it with conventional analysis tools.^[1]
• GC Monitoring: watches garbage collection activity so you can relate it to server hangs and see how long collections take and how much memory they free. You can also observe how often young and old generation collections happen and how long they last, which helps you pick GC tuning flags.^[1]

Server health reporting

spark can report metrics that summarise the overall health of the server:^[1]

• TPS: ticks per second, with the /tps command giving a more accurate figure.^[1]
• Tick durations: how long each tick takes (min, max and average).^[1]
• CPU usage: how much CPU the server process uses, and how much the overall system uses.^[1]
• Memory usage: how much memory the process is using.^[1]
• Disk usage: how much disk space is free or in use on the system.^[1]

Besides tick rate averages, spark can monitor individual ticks and send a report whenever a single tick's duration goes over a set threshold. That helps you spot trends and the nature of a performance problem relative to other system or game events.^[1]

In the pack's Botania quest chapter, none of the tasks ask you to hand in an item from this mod, so the quest book gives you no steps to follow for it.^[3]

The name can be confusing, because that chapter does have a quest called "Sparks" quest, which asks you to hand in 2 of Spark. That is a Botania item, not one from this mod, so don't treat it as a step in this mod's progression. The quest book places it after "Mana-infused items" quest, and "Terrestrial Agglomeration Plate" quest comes after it.^[3]

No quest in this pack's quest book asks for an item from this mod's own namespace (spark). The quests that look related are in the Botania chapter, and they use Botania's own items.^[3]

Botania chapter: the Sparks quest

The Botania chapter is in the Production group, chapter 27 of 44 in the book. "Sparks" quest asks you to hand in 2 of Spark. It unlocks after "Mana-infused items" quest, which itself comes after "Mana storage" quest.^[3]

Sparks then feed into "Terrestrial Agglomeration Plate" quest. That quest unlocks only once you have finished Sparks and all five rune quests: a quest in "Botania", a quest in "Botania", a quest in "Botania", a quest in "Botania" and a quest in "Botania".^[3]

Botania chapter: Spark Augments

Later in the same chapter, "Spark Augments" quest asks for an item filter (itemfilters:or), so it accepts one of a set of items. The sources don't list which items are accepted. The quest comes after "Alfheim resources" quest, which comes after "Portal to Alfheim" quest.^[3]

Good news: spark needs very little tuning. The mod itself says no configuration or setup is necessary, you just install it, and this pack keeps its config files about as small as they can be.^[1]

backgroundProfiler

The one real option in the pack's spark config is backgroundProfiler, and the pack sets it to false.^[4]

Unverified The sources do not say what spark's default for backgroundProfiler is, or describe exactly what the option does, so it can't be confirmed whether the pack changed this value from the mod default.

The other spark files

• _header is just a label line at the top of the file that names it as the spark configuration file and points to the spark documentation. It is not a setting you need to change.^[4]
• is an empty list in this pack, so there are no entries stored in it.^[5]

There isn't much version history to tell for spark in this pack. Project Infinity 0.1 0.0.51.4-hotfix-2 ships spark 1.10.53, using the Forge file spark-1.10.53-forge.jar.^[2]

The pack's file list shows spark was already in the pack by Project Infinity 0.1 0.0.48.0 or earlier. That is as far back as the sources let me place it.^[2]

The spark 1.10.53 release is described as bringing the latest version of spark for Minecraft 1.20.1 to Modrinth. The changelog entry itself doesn't list individual changes.^[6]

Unverified The pack changelogs have no entries for spark, and the sources don't include a detailed list of what changed in 1.10.53 or in earlier versions. Which versions the pack used before 1.10.53 is also unverified.