12-04-2012, 11:59 PM | #1 |
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64 bit calibre on Windows
Hi all,
After several weeks of fun getting all of calibre's dependencies to build on Windows 64bit, I finally have a working 64 bit build of calibre in Windows. The installer is designed to install calibre 64bit alongside an existing calibre 32bit install. So you can switch between them until you figure out which one you want to use. The shortcut for launching calibre 64bit is named "calibre 64bit - E-book management" and when running it the status line at the bottom of the main calibre window will say [64bit]. The advantages of the 64 bit build are it can use all the RAM on machines with more than 3GB of RAM, which allows conversion of certain large and messy documents. There also may be small performance improvements. The downside is that since this a new build there may well be some bugs that lead to crashes. So if you are running a 64 bit version of Windows, try out the new calibre 64bit build and let me know how it goes. http://status.calibre-ebook.com/dist/win64 Note that calibre has had 64 bit builds for linux and OS X for years. Last edited by kovidgoyal; 12-05-2012 at 12:30 AM. |
12-05-2012, 12:11 AM | #2 |
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Thanks for the hardwork and for keep supporting Calibre.
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12-05-2012, 12:36 AM | #3 |
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If you run both the 32- and 64-bit, will they both access the same library and metadata files? It wouldn't be necessary to create two copies to switch between them?
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12-05-2012, 12:40 AM | #4 |
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Yes, they will both access the same library and config files.
Last edited by kovidgoyal; 12-05-2012 at 12:59 AM. |
12-05-2012, 12:49 AM | #5 |
You kids get off my lawn!
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Thanks! I'll see about giving the 64-bit a run this weekend. Gonna be too tied up at work to do it before then, I'm afraid.
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12-05-2012, 01:50 AM | #6 |
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Question, can calibre 64-bit run as a portable app, too? Just wondering since most of the PCs I work with now run Windows 7 64-bit with just a few exceptions. Having access to the extra RAM should be some help during particularly involved conversions.
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12-05-2012, 01:52 AM | #7 |
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I'm not going to make a portable 64 bit version, 32-bits are portable, 64-bits are not. There are still lots of 32-bit windows systems around. You might be able to get it to work by manually replacing the contents of the Calibre folder in your 32 bit calibre portable directory with the contents of the the Calibre2 folder from a 64-bit calibre install.
Last edited by kovidgoyal; 12-05-2012 at 04:43 AM. |
12-05-2012, 02:46 AM | #8 |
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Just given the 64bit version a quick try. It works well and no crashes so far. Converted 4 books and downloaded meta data then did a check with the find duplicates plugin and all worked perfectly.
It certainly seems a bit quicker (I do have 16gb of ram). So with my limited testing so far it seems a worthwhile upgrade for me. as always for all your hard work. |
12-05-2012, 08:31 AM | #9 |
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Great, I like to have a 64bit version. What's about the plugins, do they work with the 64bit Calibre?
With a quick look I can answer it by myself. It seems to work for plugins I am using (Quality-Check, Modify epub...) Thanks for this new version. No problems so far in a first view. Last edited by Divingduck; 12-05-2012 at 09:15 AM. |
12-05-2012, 10:03 AM | #10 |
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12-05-2012, 12:25 PM | #11 |
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I am intrigued and run Windows 7 64-bit on my PC. If I install the 64-bit version and use the existing library is there a risk that any bugs in the new version could corrupt my existing book files? (EPUBs)
I'm just wondering if I should back up the library before trying the new version. To my amateur tech thinking, the only real risk would be to the library metadata and possibly to any books I converted using the 64-bit version. My assumption is that existing book files would be fine but I'd like to get the thoughts of some of the more technical folks on the forum. Thanks in advance for any guidance! |
12-05-2012, 01:14 PM | #12 |
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Bugs that could corrupt your data are highly unlikely. The part that deals with data is mostly written in python and that code is common to both 32 and 64 bit installs, it doesn't care about 32 vs. 64 bit. That same code has been running in 64 bit linux and osx installs for many years.
However, computers are highly complex systems and there are never any guarantees. As always, you should make frequent backups of your data. To answer your specific question, calibre does not touch ebook files unless you do a conversion, so yes only the metadata.db file and any files you convert are at risk. On a technical note: The bugs that I think are likely are mostly crashes caused by the fact that windows has different sizes for the long datatype (LLP64 instead of LP64) from unix systems and all the C/C++ libraries that calibre uses are all primarily developed for Unix systems. Some of those libraries probably make assumptions about pointers fitting in integer datatypes that are not true on windows. Last edited by kovidgoyal; 12-05-2012 at 01:32 PM. |
12-05-2012, 01:26 PM | #13 |
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@Divingduck: Almost all plugins should continue to work. Most plugins contain only python code and python does not care about 32 vs. 64 bit.
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12-07-2012, 08:34 AM | #14 |
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Just uninstalled old Calibre version, installed new version, and I was happy to see that all my plug-ins and the DRM tools were still active and working. Checking the RAM usage while converting some books still only used 3.99 GB, but the conversion seemed to be 4-5 times faster than before. CPU usage % seemed to drop slightly. I have 4 cores, and the program was using all 4 cores.
Thank you, Mr. Goyal, and all your developer partners, for being sensitive to Calibre users needs and suggestions. I cannot stress enough for all Calibre users that like this software donate towards your project. I tried to write a short program in basic some 30 years ago to process amortorations (Spelling) for mortgages, and I ended up with 1/2 of a legal pad filled with code. I was successful eventually (could have done the calculations more quickly by hand,) but I decided quickly that I was a software user and not a programmer. Been using computers for over 30 years, and I've never used a program more feature rich and comprehensively useful than Calibre. Kudos to you, Sir! |
12-07-2012, 08:40 AM | #15 |
Country0129
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In continuem of the above:
I have 10,200 books in my library, all converted from various types of files to MObI readable on Kindle, all obtained from the Web, all with downloaded metadata, all functions, features, library integrity, all DRM free, and all still works seamlessly in the 64-Bit version.
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