[darcs-users] GSoC: network optimisation vs cache vs library?

[Alberto Bertogli]

On Sat, Apr 17, 2010 at 04:12:09AM -0400, Max Battcher wrote:
> I'm pretty sure that I'm not missing the point, only that I think I'm  
> not very well elucidating mine (and I'm sorry that I've been very bad at  
> that in this thread): performance gains are great for everyone, but they  
> aren't the start and end of everyone's problems, regardless if they are  
> perceived that way... and the provided example was one in particular  
> where it seemed to me that the perceived problem wasn't the real problem  
> in the scenario. Even if the best long-term solution is to increase  
> darcs performance, the immediate, nearest-term solution is to improve  
> Trac+darcs and provide a good experience for users of today's versions  
> of darcs. Does that make sense?

Yes, and I agree that when focusing on the UI side and thinking about darcs'
performance characteristics as a given fact of life, there are many things
that can be improved on that front, like the ones you mentioned.

I was just pointing out that, while I think this is valid reasoning when
thinking about UIs, it doesn't change the fact that the annotate is a slow
operation, and it is interesting to know if it's an operation users care
about or not.

Maybe, as you say, the perceived problem was an UI one, or could be solved (to
a "good enough for the user" degree) in the UI. I just read it in a different
way, but of course I may be wrong.


Anyway, since I'm not affected by this as an end-user, I'm not hacking darcs
to make it go faster, and neither am I going to make darcsweb do any special
tricks like the ones discussed here (I don't think it's worth the additional
complexity), I don't think it makes much sense for me to keep on discussing
this now that I think we both understand each other's arguments (I hope!).

Thanks,
		Alberto