Re: [Gnu-arch-users] Some issues

[Charles Duffy]

On Wed, 2004-06-09 at 11:29, Florian Weimer wrote:
> > I don't see how this is a design defect.  If you want to start fresh,
> > use a new archive -- don't try to change history and deny the branch
> > existed.
> 
> But this is exactly what creates stale branches. 8-)

I think those are called "history".

Storing history is generally considered a feature in a revision control
system.

> > Besides, how often is a user likely to accidentally use a stale
> > branch?
> 
> She might think that the branch in the other archive is still live.

That's what branch sealing is good for.

> > How so?  If you have the tar file, you can use show-changeset to get a
> > summary of the changes or apply it to your tree.  I have not plumbed
> > the details of some of the files and directories in a changeset, but
> > most of them seem to be there for a reason.
> 
> Yeah, but it's kind of hard to review a changeset in that format
> without additional tools.

tla show-changeset is "additional tools" enough for this purpose. On a
project where it's the primary revision control system, I hardly see how
this is onerous (and, in the days of apt-get, emerge, etc, I hardly see
how it's much of a problem in other projects either).

> I mean the checked-out trees, not the archive.  The archive format is
> not such a pressing issue, indeed.

ReiserFS is designed to promote just these kinds of "abuse" -- and the
htree branch of ext3 isn't exactly slouchy either. There are filesystems
built with performance in many-small-files configurations in mind; if
this is, to you, such a pressing concern, you may wish to consider using
one.