To: "Dimitrie O. Paun" <dpaun@rogers.com>
References: <20041115191000.GA30577@rogers.com>
	<41990CD4.9050003@arbash-meinel.com>
	<20041115225611.GC28559@zipworld.com.au>
	<20041116043454.GT6137@rogers.com>
From: Miles Bader <miles@lsi.nec.co.jp>
System-Type: i686-pc-linux-gnu
Blat: Foop
Date: Tue, 16 Nov 2004 13:47:51 +0900
In-Reply-To: <20041116043454.GT6137@rogers.com> (Dimitrie O. Paun's message
	of "Mon, 15 Nov 2004 23:34:54 -0500")
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Cc: mlh@zipworld.com.au, gnu-arch-users@gnu.org
Subject: [Gnu-arch-users] Re: Archives vs. categories vs. versions
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"Dimitrie O. Paun" <dpaun@rogers.com> writes:
> Why the time marking? I understand it's needed to work around
> some performance issues, but in all honesty it looks like a
> hack. Moreover, it's hard to automate. Why is it needed in to
> begin with?

AFAIK, the main reason for it is that archives are write-only, and given
the rather rigid namespace structure of arch ("kinda flat"), means that
the namespace could fill up with cruft -- temporary branches, etc.

Whether this a real problem, I don't know.  I've only been using arch
for about 1.5 years, and don't personally seem to have generated all
that much in the way of throw-away branches and the like (maybe it would
be worse for shared archives).

I suppose mirroring speed could be another issue, but I don't know much
about that.  My recollection is that the the whole-tree scan done by
mirroring is already a slight problem for people like James who mirror
many trees.

In some sense regular archive changes could be a _good_ thing if it
helped to wean people off the notion that archives are a fixed thing.

However I think that there really need to be better tools for managing
archive changes -- for instance, I've long wanted a feature that would
inform users "hey this branch is old, please use the new one here ...";
this feature would also help with intra-archive version changes (see old
threads for my suggested implementation, which may be obsolete given the
recently proposed "version variables" mechanism).

-Miles
-- 
Suburbia: where they tear out the trees and then name streets after them.


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