[darcs-users] hashed-storage / darcs-hs progress

[Eric Kow]

Just a quick update on the current progress with the hashed storage
work.

Ganesh, Petr and I had a short meeting on the #darcs channel
(log: http://irclog.perlgeek.de/darcs/2009-09-20#i_1519390 )
to work out a practical way to work through the disagreement on some
points about the hashed-storage work.

The two open questions were
 (a) if we could divorce some darcs-format-specific parts
     from hashed-storage
 (b) if we should generalise the current Hash type to
     something less darcs-specific

For (b) we all seem to agree that generalising the Hash type could be
useful.  Ganesh is more convinced of this and would prefer that we do
this from the start.  Petr is less so and therefore feels that we should
postpone this till the need actually arises.

Since this is something that can be safely postponed for future work,
we decided to just treat it as such and focus on getting (a) resolved.

Having agreed to this, we took a closer look at the problem.
Right now there are two kinds of darcs-format-specific information in
hashed-storage:

 (a1) conventions for admin files like _darcs, _darcs/hashed_inventory and
      _darcs/pristine.hashed
 (a2) format for hashed filenames, the file listing used to represent
      directories, etc

In the same vein as (b), we think of (a2) as being less urgent than
(a1), so we narrowed the focus further to (a1).  And since this was
relatively trivial we decided to just put the code into Darcs proper
for now.

So this gave us a way forward a small plan of action:

1. Petr: patch hashed-storage to remove the (a1) stuff and likewise
   Darcs (if relevant)

2. Petr: comment on remaining darcs-hs-specific points on the wiki

3. Ganesh: Merge darcs-hs patches into mainline Darcs

After these small steps, I think we can be looking forward to
index-based diffing and a faster Darcs for hashed repositories.

Thanks!

PS. Thanks to Ganesh and Petr for checking drafts of this.

-- 
Eric Kow <http://www.nltg.brighton.ac.uk/home/Eric.Kow>
PGP Key ID: 08AC04F9
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