[darcs-users] memory consuption of patch index in darcs 2.10

[Guillaume Hoffmann]

Hi,

the patch index data structure will be present in darcs 2.10. It is
currently enabled by default in the development version of darcs
(since now 2 years).

We still have a problematic issue with it, that is, when cloning big
repositories, patch index creation consumes lots of memory. In some
cases (on my computer, when darcs is built without optimizations), it
ends up with a "stack overflow" error. See
<http://bugs.darcs.net/issue2405> for more details.

If someone is interested in investigating this issue please look at:

* http://darcs.net/Using/PatchIndex
* http://darcs.net/Internals/PatchIndex
* the function [Darcs.Repository.PatchIndex.createOrUpdatePatchIndexDisk](http://hub.darcs.net/darcs/darcs-screened/browse/src/Darcs/Repository/PatchIndex.hs#445)

It would be nice to fix this by the 2.10 release, otherwise I would be
in favor of disabling it by default.

Guillaume