On 5/20/05, John Szakmeister <john@szakmeister.net> wrote:
> On Thursday 19 May 2005 21:54, Ben Collins-Sussman wrote:
> > On May 19, 2005, at 6:33 PM, Sreekanth Puram wrote:
> > > Any help would be appreciated.
> >
> > The time it takes to add a new entry to a directory is O(n). The
> > repository compresses subsequent versions of file-nodes, but that's
> > not true for directory-nodes. Every new version of a directory is
> > written out in full: that is, the entire list of directory entries
> > is written out every time you add a new child (and create a new
> > revision).
>
> Does that then counter our claim that tagging is O(1) that we so
> prominently advertise? From our web page:
> * Branching and tagging are cheap (constant time) operations
> There is no reason for these operations to be expensive, so they
> aren't.
No, as that refers to the number of files which are being tagged,
which still is a constant factor.
> Branches and tags are both implemented in terms of an underlying "copy"
> operation. A copy takes up a small, constant amount of space. Any copy
> is a tag; and if you start committing on a copy, then it's a branch as
> well. (This does away with CVS's "branch-point tagging", by removing the
> distinction that made branch-point tags necessary in the first place.)
>
> > So, perhaps you shouldn't create 20,000 entries in /tags. Spread
> > them out, create some sort of tree structure below /tags/.
>
> Or, perhaps, we should live up to our claim. I'm disappointed about this.
> We don't generate that many tags or releases, so it we would never suffer
> from it. But a lot of corporate guys see this as a big boon... and it
> isn't true. :-(
It *is* true. CVS isn't constant in the number of files to be tagged
or in the number of tags to be created. Subversion only exhibits the
second behaviour.
bye,
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Received on Fri May 20 13:43:03 2005