[darcs-users] Re: darcs and patches@ mail

[Sean E. Russell]

On Sunday 15 February 2004 16:49, Aggelos Economopoulos wrote:
> Ah, but in the bus case almost everybody makes the same educated
> guess, so you don't feel the need to try it.
...
> Sure, but think of all the fun you'd get out of it 8) And in any case if

This is very true.  This sort of subproject appeals to some people.

> changes in the architecture of the version control system required a
> rewrite of the database code then you've done a bad job - making
> extra assumptions about your usage patterns is one thing, bad
> engineering is another.

In my experience, this isn't true.  Building an architecture is part 
experience, and part luck; it almost never has anything to do with good 
engineering, because (a) requirements shift, and (b) sometimes -- as you 
yourself point out -- you can't tell how well something is going to work 
until you try it.

Applying the word "engineering" to software development is a dangerous thing 
to do.

> I suggested you should read the code, not run it! (and exactly why do
> you think ext3 isn't a decent filesystem?)

Ick!  Read the code?  There are some areas of software where I'm purely a 
consumer.  I have zero interest in the internals of filesystems, as much as I 
like to use them.  Since my time is finite, I think I'm "disinclined to 
aquiesque" (name the quote!).

I've had more filesystem failures with ext3 than I've ever had with any other 
file system, ext2 included.  I know a lot of people have good experiences 
with ext3, but I've had it installed on five seperate systems -- a desktop, 
and four laptops of different make -- and with three different Linux 
distributions (Mandrake, Gentoo, and Debian).  On every machine -- and some 
more than others -- I've had filesystem failures and actual data loss.  
Usually this is related to an unexpected shut-down of the system, but heck -- 
the whole point of ext3 is that it is journalled, and is supposed to be fault 
tolerant.  However, a couple of times, I've had filesystem corruptions that 
showed up during a routine filesystem check, with no related "event".

I don't trust ext3, at all.

> I guess you haven't tried using a maildir with 40,000 mails in it :-)

No... I usually keep mine under 700 or so.

Dang.  I have to say, that's pretty impressive.  40k emails.  Wow.  My entire 
maildir system (including subfolders) holds about 7,500 emails, at about 
99MB.

> Oh. You mean arch ;)

No, I mean darcs ;-)

-- 
### SER   
### Deutsch|Esperanto|Francaise|Linux|XML|Java|Ruby|Aikido
### http://www.germane-software.com/~ser  jabber.com:ser  ICQ:83578737 
### GPG: http://www.germane-software.com/~ser/Security/ser_public.gpg