[darcs-users] Re: darcs and patches@ mail

[Aggelos Economopoulos]

On Sun, 15 Feb 2004 17:07:18 -0500
"Sean E. Russell" <ser at germane-software.com> wrote:
> On Sunday 15 February 2004 16:49, Aggelos Economopoulos wrote:
[...]
> > changes in the architecture of the version control system required a
> > rewrite of the database code then you've done a bad job - making
> > extra assumptions about your usage patterns is one thing, bad
> > engineering is another.
> 
> In my experience, this isn't true.  Building an architecture is part 
> experience, and part luck; it almost never has anything to do with
> good engineering, because (a) requirements shift, and (b) sometimes
> -- as you yourself point out -- you can't tell how well something is
> going to work until you try it.

I totally agree with you. My objection was to the 'rewriting' part. With
some extra effort spent planning, you'll probably only need to throw
away your first attempt and after that you'll (mostly?) make
evolutionary changes (that doesn't mean you won't make big changes in
small steps though). But this is way off topic.

> Applying the word "engineering" to software development is a dangerous
> thing to do.

I'd like to argue, but it's going to be a long thread and I should get
back to studying...

> > I suggested you should read the code, not run it! (and exactly why
> > do you think ext3 isn't a decent filesystem?)
> 
> Ick!  Read the code?  There are some areas of software where I'm
> purely a consumer.  I have zero interest in the internals of
> filesystems, as much as I like to use them.  Since my time is finite,
> I think I'm "disinclined to aquiesque" (name the quote!).
> 
> I've had more filesystem failures with ext3 than I've ever had with
> any other file system, ext2 included.  I know a lot of people have
> good experiences with ext3, but I've had it installed on five seperate
> systems -- a desktop, and four laptops of different make -- and with
> three different Linux distributions (Mandrake, Gentoo, and Debian). 
> On every machine -- and some more than others -- I've had filesystem
> failures and actual data loss.

Did you bother reporting them? ext3 has been rock solid for me (but I'm
stuck with it because I need the on-disk compatibility with ext2 so my
bsd OSes can access it).

> Usually this is related to an unexpected shut-down of the system, but
> heck -- the whole point of ext3 is that it is journalled, and is
> supposed to be fault tolerant.  However, a couple of times, I've had
> filesystem corruptions that showed up during a routine filesystem
> check, with no related "event".

Are you sure it's not the hardware? I haven't seen more than a
couple of such bug reports for ext3 in years.

> I don't trust ext3, at all.

Well, with these experiences, I can't blame you. But I doubt it's the
filesystem's fault.

> > I guess you haven't tried using a maildir with 40,000 mails in it
> > :-)
> 
> No... I usually keep mine under 700 or so.
> 
> Dang.  I have to say, that's pretty impressive.  40k emails.  Wow.  My
> entire maildir system (including subfolders) holds about 7,500 emails,
> at about 99MB.

Try subscribing to linux-kernel. Or gcc-patches. Or bk-commits-head. Or
freebsd-current. Or ...

Back to studying,
Aggelos