Re: [Monotone-devel] [RFC] Monotone NETSYNC Hook Extension & Abstraction Layer

[Nathaniel Smith]

On Wed, Sep 26, 2007 at 11:07:48AM +1000, William Uther wrote:
> Or you could (in addition to dropping illegal certs) garbage collect  
> any revs with no branch certs or no descendants with branch certs at  
> the end of each sync.

Actual garbage collecting is hard, because it involves deleting things
from the database.

Remember that robust programming is like secure programming, except
worse, because the enemy we are defending against is our own
incompetence :-).  Deleting things (esp. from something as complex as
a delta-compressed cross-referenced store) is a Very Very Easy place
to screw up, and then we lose data, and we can't do that, so... one
would need very careful design to do this safely.

-- Nathaniel

-- 
Electrons find their paths in subtle ways.