[darcs-users] Request for early user feedback on patch index darcs

[Ganesh Sittampalam]

On 22/07/2012 05:07, Aditya wrote:

>  If you run changes/annotate/record/.. using patch index darcs on an
> existing repository, patch index will be created automatically.
> Alternatively, run optimize --patch-index to exclusively create patch
> index. 
> 
>  You can disable patch index using optimize --no-patch-index, and enable
> it back with optimize --patch-index. If you wish to disable patch index
> at creation, pass --no-patch-index. A lazy get will implicitly disable
> patch index, as you require to have all patches to create a patch index.

I wonder about calling it --disable-patch-index rather than
--no-patch-index, just to make it clearer that it's changing the state
of the repository to stop it being created in future.

>  One of the concerns I already have is automatic creation of patch index
> on existing repositories. The time it takes to create patch index
> increases dramatically based on buffer cache
> <http://oss.sgi.com/LDP/LDP/sag/buffer-cache.html>. Creating a patch
> index just after get takes 6 sec, whereas it takes 1min after cleaning
> the cache(This is for darcs development repo). This suggests that a user
> could experience a potentially large delay on changes/record/.. .

How about doing the same as with a get where it's safe to ^C and get a
lazy repo (and there's a message to say that)?

Another thing to be careful about is not failing badly when the repo is
read-only and a read-only command like changes is being run - we already
have a problem with the file index in that regard, but we shouldn't add
to it.

Cheers,

Ganesh