Storage

Where the module keeps what it downloads, how to see it, move it and clear it.

The module itself is small. What is big is downloaded when you first need it, and kept in one folder in your home directory so every BoxLang installation, project and user session shares it:

~/.bxaudio/
├── engine/     the text to speech engine (about 148 MB)
├── voices/     the voices you downloaded (63 to 114 MB each)
├── ffmpeg/     FFmpeg, if your computer has none
└── cache/      things that can be rebuilt

See it

bx-audio where

bx-audio home: /home/you/.bxaudio

FOLDER   SIZE       WHAT
engine   148.6 MB   Text to speech engine jars
voices   63.2 MB    Downloaded voices
ffmpeg   -          FFmpeg, when the system has none
cache    -          Rendered samples and other things that can be rebuilt

audioStorage();    // { home, totalMB, folders: [ { kind, path, description, exists, sizeMB } ] }

The web explorer shows the same location in its footer, read only.

Clear it

bx-audio clean voices            # shows what would go and asks you to add --yes
bx-audio clean voices --yes
bx-audio clean all --yes

audioStorageClear( "voices" );   // returns the megabytes freed; kinds: engine, voices, ffmpeg, cache, all

Everything is downloaded again the next time it is needed. bx-audio remove joe deletes one voice, bx-audio remove engine the engine.

Move it

The folder is, in order of priority: the module setting home, the bxaudio.home Java system property, the BX_AUDIO_HOME environment variable, then ~/.bxaudio.

export BX_AUDIO_HOME=/data/bxaudio

In boxlang.json:

{ "modules": { "bxaudio": { "settings": { "home": "/data/bxaudio", "autoInstall": true } } } }

Use it for a server with a data disk, for a container (mount the folder as a volume so the downloads survive), or to pre-load a machine that has no internet: copy a populated ~/.bxaudio to it, then set autoInstall to false.

How the speech engine is loaded

The engine's jars are not on any class path. They are added to the module's own class loader the first time they are needed, so they stay separate from the rest of the runtime, and a native library (ONNX Runtime) is loaded once per JVM.