Re: Revisiting metadata storage

From: Hilco Wijbenga <hilco.wijbenga@gmail.com>
Date: Dec 15, 2011, 21:40 UTC
Message-ID: <CAE1pOi2TGWmFErcKhQu-a37JjLh22O1zFYoBaVRyfBDFjOTE9Q@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <CAD77+gR=SjU0Ne9jort91pdHDA=RjkTJUJmnqKBipqoGUmoL_A@mail.gmail.com>

On 14 December 2011 09:59, Richard Hartmann <richih.mailinglist@gmail.com> wrote:

Show 11 quoted lines

> On Tue, Dec 6, 2011 at 23:45, Ronan Keryell
> <Ronan.Keryell@hpc-project.com> wrote:
>
>> At least I'm interested and began to dig into it but I do not have a lot
>> of time to work on it...
>
> If we can agree on Perl, I can try to help. I don't think I speak
> enough Python to be of use with that.
>
> Other people who have an interest in this: Please pipe up so we can
> hammer out a rough consensus & roadmap.

I'd love to have better support for metadata (specifically timestamps). I don't care whether it's Perl, Python, Bash, or C. I don't think I'll be much help coding but I'd like to try.

In all honesty though, I plan to rewrite our build to use file digests instead of timestamps. Right now every rebase means a full (and almost completely unnecessary) rebuild. Luckily I'm using the wonderful git-new-workdir so there is no pain when switching branches.

Once the rewrite is complete (in one or two months) Git's relentless timestamp changes should no longer affect us as much anymore. I would still like to get a better grip on metadata though. Git should be able to not touch files that have not changed. But whether that's feasible or even in scope of what you have in mind... :-)

Cheers, Hilco