[Gnu-arch-users] Re: libraries / cacherevs

[Stefan Monnier]

> I think it's an important part of arch that the logs are part of the
> file tree rather than being a sort of repository-only metainfo as they
> are in many other rcses.

Which part of the patch-logs do you find important?
I agree that the list of patch names is important since it's used by the
beloved star-merge.  But that list can be represented much more efficiently
than what we have now.
So do you also find it important to have the actual text of each and every
commit ever performed and then merged into the current tree?
I find it good that it's available off-line, but I'd be perfectly happy to
keep it in a revlib, a mirror, or some cache.

> One thing that's been discussed in the past is to allow some patch-logs
> to be batched up and stored as compressed-tar-files in the tree (though
> in the same general location as normal patch-logs), with explicit user
> commands to batch or unbatch patch-log ranges.

Lots of manual work.

> This would preserve the good properties of patch logs, but use a great
> deal less disk space and inodes (patch-logs compress very well, and
> because they're usually so small, tend to waste a lot of space due to
> filesystem granularity).

src/tla-0% du -s \{arch\}/
15200   {arch}
src/tla-0% tar clf - \{arch\} | wc 
 170281  309332 9697280
src/tla-0% tar zclf - \{arch\} | wc
   2746   17678  829440

It seems that the filesystem granularity is not a big issue since tarring
only saves you about 35% of space.  But yes, it does compress nicely (no
wonder, with all those redundant copies of <category> and
<category>--<branch>).


        Stefan