[darcs-users] Developer machine spec for Linux kernel w/ darcs

[Tim O'Callaghan]

Same problem here, but with the GCC mainline tree.  I thought it might
have be something to do with the tailor.py script, but after reading
your report i see we have the same problem. I left a tailor/darcs
session syncing with the GCC mainline, come back 8 hours later my box
is dying, no response from it. So I think, ok, it will get over this.
14 hours later its dead and needs rebooting.

Quite a feat for a revision control system!

I think it may be time to learn haskel and join the devel list. Is
there somewhere in the codebase that can be pointed to as the culprit
for  this memory usage? This kind of memory usage smacks of
malloc(100);fork(); or some kind of recursion gone mad.

I mean it's using a *scary* amount of  memory. The GCC mainline
codebase, is about 190 meg, about 24,600 files. What kind of state
information is darcs keeping that it needs over 750 meg of ram?

Sorry for the rant, but my questions still stand.:
If this is a known problem, where is the problem?
What kind of state information does darcs need to keep that it eats memory.

Tim.



On Tue, 30 Nov 2004 00:00:44 +0000, Jim Hague
<jim at fluffy.bear-cave.org.uk> wrote:
> I'm a complete newcomer to darcs. Reading the manual and tutorial it looks
> just like what I want for doing occasional driver work on the Linux kernel.
>
> The problem is that when I try and get the kernel repository linked from
> the Darcs home page, darcs chews memory until nuked by the out of memory
> killer. I realise it is memory-hungry; what I want to know is some idea
> of how much memory I actually need. I've searched the mailing list
> archives, and also found the Wiki performance page where
> David Roundy (serious respect, sir) guesses it could require 1Gb, but
> I have seen another message where someone suggests they succeeded with
> 256Mb + 660Mb swap.
>
> My development machine is currently 256Mb + 2 x 490Mb swap areas. Would
> upgrading it to 512Mb be likely to work or do I really need 1Gb? Can
> anyone report a working 256Mb or 512Mb configuration that does successfully
> get the Linux kernel, and if so are you building darcs with the
> -enable-antimemoize option? Basically I'm keen to get this working, but
> need a solid data point on just how I'm much I'm going to need to beef
> up my configuration.
>
> Thanks in advance.
> --
> Jim Hague - jim at bear-cave.org.uk          Never trust a computer you can't lift.
>