Re: Another Way

Greg Lindahl (lindahl@cs.virginia.edu)
Mon, 5 Jul 1999 16:41:45 -0400 (EDT)


> First, don't confuse rewriting with in-kernel compound files.
> They're separate issues.

No, they're related:

Why do we possibly want in-kernel compound files? Efficiency. But if
rewriting is efficient enough, we don't need in-kernel compound files.

> And over a network rewriting is very bad. Writing 30Mb is slow.

Which is why a smart emacs installation writes autosave files to local
disk. You only have to pay the rewriting price when you save or exit
emacs.

If this is efficient enough, you have no need for in-kernel compound
files.

BTW, error recovery for in-kernel compound files over a network is
going to be a pain. Personally I would rather deal the error semantics
of rewriting, which is pretty straight-forward: write new file, rename
to old name. If either step fails, you still have a valid old
file. With an in-kernel compound file implementation, it's much much
more complicated.

-- g

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