Wow - thanks IOhannes, this is amazing! * IOhannes m zmoelnig via Pd-list <pd-list@lists.iem.at> [2025-07-28 17:02]: > hi all, > > i've just setup a new (experimental) webservice, that shows some graph about > trends in the usage of Pd, based on deken queries. > > as we all know, deken - Pd's built in package manager - can be used to query > <https://deken.puredata.info/> for available packages. > > what some of you might now know is that deken sends the following > information along with the request: > - the Tcl/Tk version used (e.g. "8.6.10") > - the Pd version used (e.g. "0.55-2") > - the deken version used (e.g. "0.9.18") > - the deken architecture of Pd (e.g. "Windows-amd64-32") > > all this information is send as the "user agent" string (just like, when you > access a webpage with your favourite browser, it will send its version and > whatnot, e.g. "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:128.0) Gecko/20100101 > Firefox/128.0"). > > sidenote: i think myself of rather privacy aware, and do not think that > collecting any of these data is problematic (nor is sending them from within > Pd). > > also, because this is how the internet works, the web server knows about > your IP (and thus can make some educated guess about the country you are > currently accessing a webpage from), and whether you are using an encrypted > channel (https) or not (http); and of course the actual query. > > i've finally decided to make this data public (and somewhat useful), by > extracting some time-series and creating nice graphs from them. > > these are now available on <https://deken.puredata.info/trends> > > the data should get updated automatically. > (since the data already covers about 7 years, it might look like it's not > being updated though; but this is about seeing long-term *trends*, rather > than short-term hypes, so I don't think it is a problem) > > > # data skew > > the input data for the trend series is searches for externals via Pd's > built-in package manager. > this means, that specific use cases of Pd might not show up in the data at > all. > e.g. some Linux users might just prefer to install externals via their > package manager (and do all searches there), so they won't be represented > here at all. > > Pd distributions that ship with a lot of externals, will not show up (as the > users will not have a need to search for externals). > esp. Pd-l2ork and Purr-Data do not show up, as they do not allow deken > search (and there's some binary incompatibility, so that's a good thing) > Plug Data does not show up either, even though you *can* use deken with it, > because Plug Data does not directly query our web server for caching > reasons. > > early versions of deken would not send a specific user agent string (and use > just the default one of Tcl/Tk), that's why you sometimes see labels like > "Darwin?" or "i386?" - these values are just educated guesses, based on the > user agent string and the the time when the queries occurred) > > > # absolute vs relative data > > the data presented is relative (in percent). > you can get graphs with absolute values by clicking on the images. > > > # oddities > > the absolute data is very seasonal (whereas the relative representation is > more or less stable). > this *might* have to do with Pd being primarily used in educational contexts > (with holidays in between, where the Pd is little used). > but really, idk. > > the other thing i found odd was that up to 2020 a considerable amount of the > webtraffic (between 50% and 70%!) was using https. > after that this dropped to between 5-10%. > after some investigation i found that this has mostly to do with us > upgrading the Tcl/Tk version included with Pd on macOS: up to Pd-0.51 (or > so), the included Tcl/Tk was able to use system installed tcl-libraries, and > macOS comes with a library that allows us to do https. > newer versions of Tcl/Tk can no longer use this library, and since we do not > ship our own, this means that the traiffic is degraded to http :-( > > > > cheers, > > gasdmr > IOhannes > -- > please do not CC me for list-emails >
> --- > pd-list@lists.iem.at - the Pure Data mailinglist > https://lists.iem.at/hyperkitty/list/pd-list@lists.iem.at/message/FXCP2RBI4RGNSRTLPO2VVANZCDV6YECN/ > > To unsubscribe send an email to pd-list-le...@lists.iem.at mailing list > UNSUBSCRIBE and account-management -> https://lists.iem.at/ --- pd-list@lists.iem.at - the Pure Data mailinglist https://lists.iem.at/hyperkitty/list/pd-list@lists.iem.at/message/2WSGWOOUA7BLKWAB2I73ICO52HQKUISV/ To unsubscribe send an email to pd-list-le...@lists.iem.at mailing list UNSUBSCRIBE and account-management -> https://lists.iem.at/
