Re: space-efficient working copies

On Mon, Dec 03, 2007 at 11:39:24AM -0600, kmradke@rockwellcollins.com wrote:
> > I would really like to be able to implement a light-weight working copy
> > using symbolic links that point to a common read-only area, replacing
> > the links with editable data when locks/edit permissions are granted.
> >
> > Does anyone have any ideas if something like this is feasible in
> > subversion?
>
> A common shared area is interesting, but probably hard to implement.
> Think about permissions, who actually updates the common area, etc.
>
> I believe someone thought about keeping the pristine files in a compressed
> format. This might reduce the space at least a little, with the
> possibility
> of not too many complex working copy code changes.

It sounds like most files are unmodified in your use case. If so, you might
be interested in scord [1], which stores a given working copy and pristine
file pair as only one copy on disk when the two files are identical. This
would only reduce disk space by up to half, but perhaps that would be
useful enough? Or perhaps it would be worth the effort to extend scord,
or use a similar approach, to optimize the multi-checkout use case?
Disclaimer: I wrote scord.

[1] http://scord.sourceforge.net/

-- 
Chris Frost  |  <http://www.frostnet.net/chris/>
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