From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Thu, 20 Mar 2014 17:36:20 GMT
Subject: Re: [GSOC 2014]idea:Git Configuration API Improvement
Message-ID: <xmqqbnx0zsa3.fsf@gitster.dls.corp.google.com>
In-Reply-To: <vpqd2hh5j7k.fsf@anie.imag.fr>

Matthieu Moy <Matthieu.Moy@grenoble-inp.fr> writes:

> Why?
>
> (In general, explaining why you chose something is more important than
> explaining what you chose)

Good educational comment.  Thanks.

> A tree (AST, Abstract syntax tree) can be interesting if you have some
> source-to-source transformations to do on the configuration files (i.e.
> edit the config files themselves).
>
> For read-only accesses, I would find it more natural to have a
> data-structure that reflects the configuration variables themselves, not
> the way they appear in the config file.

... and one important thing that was left unsaid is that the
read-only accesses happen far more often than updates, so the data
structure must be optimized for the read-only look-up case.