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Re: First impressions...

From: Garrett Rooney <rooneg_at_electricjellyfish.net>
Date: 2002-01-25 17:42:01 CET

On Fri, Jan 25, 2002 at 10:33:03AM -0600, Eric M. Hopper wrote:
 
> Using Berkeley DB extensively is a bad idea. Plain text files much more
> readable. Keep seperate revisions in seperate files or seperate
> directories. Take advantage of the filesystem as a database. Using
> Berkeley DB essentially creates an extra superfluous namespace. Try
> reading reiserfs naming system docuement
> (http://www.namesys.com/whitepaper.html) to understand why this is a bad
> idea.

svn is architected such that it will be possible in the future to drop
in a different implementation of the filesystem (which is currently
implemented with berkeley db), and many people have voiced some
interest in a plain text back end, but nobody has jumped up and said
"i'm writing one" yet. for now, berkeley db solves a great deal of
problems for us, so that's why we're using it.

> WebDAV? Why? Seems like adding a useless layer to me. Lets replace
> the very simple xinetd with a much more complex Apache, and add an extra
> superfluous protocol layer as well! OSes that make writing to a socket
> somehow different from doing any other kind of IO deserve to have it be
> complicated to port stuff to them. Luckily, you were farsighted enough
> to make this easy to change if someone gets irritated enough by it.

we would have to write a network layer anyway... also, apache gives
us a much more flexible server than any form of inetd would. plus,
now we can browse the repository from any web browser, which is just
plain cool (the current server installed on svn.collab.net doesn't
have this capability, but the dev version of the code does). plus, in
the future, once we have devoted time to better webdav compatability,
this will enable greater compatability with other tools that use
webdav.

> Actually the other problem with WebDAV is an added dependency on Apache.
> The hardest part about compiling your system is getting it to find
> Apache, and having the right version of Apache around.

this will become less of a problem when apache 2 has a stable release
we can target.

-garrett

-- 
garrett rooney                     Unix was not designed to stop you from 
rooneg@electricjellyfish.net       doing stupid things, because that would  
http://electricjellyfish.net/      stop you from doing clever things.
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Received on Sat Oct 21 14:36:59 2006

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