[Monotone-devel] Re: partial pull #2 - gaps instead of a single horizon

[Derek Scherger]

Thomas Moschny wrote:
> If *every* string representing a path in the database started with "foo", 
> that 
> prefix could also be omitted, because it would be redundant. If however only 
> some paths started with "foo" and the others did not, the prefix could 
> obviously not be omitted. That's all I wanted to say.

Ok, that makes more sense.

> In your proposal, all paths in the db would start with './', and I was trying 
> to imagine (or asking you if you could imagine) an extension to your proposal 
> in which some paths don't have that prefix. If we can't find such a use case, 
> then there's no point in having that prefix *in the db* at all.

Yeah, so there's a potential 2 byte per path optimization. I agree that
it probably doesn't make much sense to put these into the database
though.  If for no other reason that the change to existing revision hashes.

> (Note that I'm not saying it wouldn't be useful in the GUI, i.e. presented to 
> or accepted from the user.)

Yeah, I wonder whether listing paths in the UI with such prefixes would
be a good idea or not. It would at least allow for displaying the root
dir with a somewhat sensible name.

Cheers,
Derek