[darcs-users] breaking hashed files into multiple directories

[Petr Rockai]

Hi,

"Jason Dagit" <dagit at codersbase.com> writes:
> Darcs tags might correspond rather well to packs.
now, this is an interesting idea: it might be very well possible to (possibly
even as a pure http optimisation, although direct access to such "packs" might
be possible and desirable, so we don't need to keep the broken-out patch files
around...) associate such a pack to each of the "archived" inventories. Again,
this would lead to some complications for lazy repos, since now we would need
to check that the file we are looking for has not been archived yet, and if so,
fetch the pack instead of the single file.

I'd consider this to be a better alternative to checkpoints, as far as
robustness goes -- however, checkpoints might give benefits when replaying
patch applications is needed, although I'd argue that such operations shouldn't
use the checkpoint anyway.

Some corner cases might arise, when a single missing patch might trigger a
biggish download, although I suspect these would be rare enough to be ignored.

Moreover, there's some motivation to also pack hashed pristine somehow: here,
there's no equivalent of tags and there's a definite need to keep around
"partially useful" packs, where some files have gone out of date. This sounds
like a much more laborious job, involving some heuristics, hand-waving and
guesswork. I'm not sure how one'd best tackle it (might be the answer is "not
at all").

Yours,
   Petr.

-- 
Peter Rockai | me()mornfall!net | prockai()redhat!com
 http://blog.mornfall.net | http://web.mornfall.net

"In My Egotistical Opinion, most people's C programs should be
 indented six feet downward and covered with dirt."
     -- Blair P. Houghton on the subject of C program indentation