On Mon, Aug 21, 2006 at 05:42:40PM +0000, Tuomo Valkonen wrote:
> It seems that darcs gets increasingly slow in the following setting:
> 
> There are two repositories, A and B. Every time when a new file
> is added into A, it gets listed in some index files. These index
> files have been deleted from B. Now, when you pull changes from A,
> it recreates these index files in the working copy, to indicate
> conflict. The conflict is, of course, resolved by removing
> these files again. It thus happens that a new removal is recorded.
> Interestingly, these removals pile up in the merger patches, and
> darcs slowly becomes slower and slower at pulls.

These merger patches pile up (or rather nest) at a rate of
O(2^n), so I wouldn't say it "slowly becomes slower and slower",
but indeed very rapidly becomes slower. You haven't seen it
happen yet, but eventually one of these pulls will suddenly take
forever.

> I'm not sure if this should be classified as a bug... whether
> it is something that can be worked around in darcs or whether
> it is something so inherent to its working that it can not be
> done. It does make darcs quite unusable in certain situations, 
> though.

Yes, I does make darcs unusable in certain situations. Let's
call it a missdesign. (A very unfortunate missdesign, since it
jumps up from nowhere and bites you unexpectedly, unless you
understand it very well and carefully avoid it from the
beginning.) A bunch of smart people are trying to find a
solution, and as far as I understand, there has recently been
some optimism. It's too early to hold your breath yet, though.
Until then there's only one thing to do, or rather not do; don't
use darcs in this particular way.

"What way" has been described several times, and I think it's on
the wiki somewhere.


-- 
Tommy Pettersson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

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