Re: [Gnu-arch-users] Archives use cases

[Clark McGrew]

I don't know... something about this conversation is tickling my funny
bone.  Before it becomes completely circular, I'll try posing the
question in a different way.

Does anybody have experience dealing with archives with large numbers of
categories?[1]  How have you organized the project?  What are your
experiences keeping rein on category naming issues?  In my experience,
most large projects can be broken into interrelated sub-projects.  Do
you keep all of the sub-projects in the same archive or split into
multiple archives?  What are the pro's and con's of the two approaches? 
Have you used tla in the context of several independent, but
cooperating, sub-groups?  Base on experience, what has worked?  What has
not worked?

How is tla being used in the context of a large project?

Best,
Clark

[1] For the purpose of discussion, my metric for large is "more than a
100".

On Tue, 2003-10-07 at 11:18, Robert Anderson wrote:
> On Tue, 2003-10-07 at 08:00, Clark McGrew wrote:
> > On Mon, 2003-10-06 at 23:22, Robert Anderson wrote:
> > > On Mon, 2003-10-06 at 10:32, Clark McGrew wrote:
> > > > Both of the cases are questions about how to manage the flat arch name
> > > > space when there are a large number of categories.
> > > 
> > > In an abstract sense, the flat name space is completely irrelevant to
> > > how you might handle a "large number of categories."
> > 
> > I'm reminded of the saying, "In theory, theory and practice are the
> > same.  In practice, they are different".  The practical question I'm
> > trying to grok is how to manage an archive with a large number of
> > categories without having brain lock.  Consider doing a "tla categories"
> > on a large archive.
> 
> It returns a large number of categories, because you HAVE a large number
> of categories.  You haven't stated a problem yet.
> 
> > For a practical example of the problems created by a large flat
> > namespace, on most unix systems you can check a directory listing of
> > /usr/lib.  On my system, there are about 1000 names.  Now, summarize the
> > libraries by topic and package.
> 
> Ok, now we're getting somewhere.  What you want is a mechanism to
> organize your categories by some criteria.  Something like "topic."  I
> think the most straightforward solution to such organization is to use
> different archives for different topics.
> 
> > In essence, the problem is "lots of categories".
> 
> That's not a problem.  That's a relatively quantity.
> 
> A problem looks like "I want to do X, but I can't."
> 
> > I'm approaching the problem from an organizational point of view.  How
> > should we use TLA so that accidental naming collisions don't happen? 
> > How does a user browse all of the categories to find an interesting
> > one?  etc.
> 
> What kind of "interesting" is the user looking for?  By what criteria
> might they be interested in searching?
> 
> Bob
-- 
Clark McGrew                    Univ. at Stony Brook, Physics and Astronomy
<address@hidden>        631-632-8299