On 11/12/05, Ming Zhang <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On Sat, 2005-11-12 at 14:54 -0800, Hans Reiser wrote:
> > David Masover wrote:
> >
> > >Ming Zhang wrote:
> > >
> > >
> > >>On Fri, 2005-11-11 at 16:56 -0800, Peter van Hardenberg wrote:
> > >>
> > >>
> > >>
> > >>>On November 11, 2005 05:59 am, John Gilmore wrote:
> > >>>
> > >>>
> > >>>
> > >>>>Does anybody remember GoBack? It was a versioning
> > >>>>system for windows 95/98 that was incredibly flexible and useful. 
> > >>>>Tracked
> > >>>>all changes to the whole disk. Old versions of a file? no problem. grab 
> > >>>>an
> > >>>>old version of a directory for referance temporarily? easy. Got a virus?
> > >>>>revert the whole HD, and then grab the newer copies of your documents 
> > >>>>and
> > >>>>saved games as needed.
> > >>>>
> > >>>>
> > >>>My thoughts on this:
> > >>>
> > >>>The versioning would be an audit plugin. When the file is modified, tag 
> > >>>the
> > >>>current version, copy it into a sub-directory (oh, I don't know, say
> > >>>file/.revisions/<number/date>), and disable write access to it. You 
> > >>>might not
> > >>>even need extended filesystem attributes for this, but they would be 
> > >>>handy
> > >>>for tagging particular versions.
> > >>>
> > >>>
> > >>if a file is opened, modified 2 times, then closed. u will only generate
> > >>1 version right? so "When the file is modified" is inaccurate.
> > >>
> > >>
> > one could do it for every file close, and that could be a state option
> > for the versioning plugin, but most users will want to do it everytime
> > they touch filename/..../checkin
>
> what u mean touch filename? is "ls" a touch? i think close, unlink,
> create, is likely to be good candidate.

What happens if I open, truncate, append, close?  You have to consider
that... in fact, what about just "open, append, close"?  Not every app
acts the same.

> >
> > >
> > >How about "When the transaction was completed?"  Why does it matter?
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >>>Copy-on-write would make this action extremely cheap, only adding a 
> > >>>couple of
> > >>>extra writes to make it work.
> > >>>
> > >>>
> > >>add 1 line at the beginning of a 100MB text file will make this uncheap.
> > >>
> > >>
> > >
> > >Who has to work with 100 meg text files?  And why has this person not
> > >broken them down into 100 kilobyte text files?  Storage efficiency isn't
> > >really an issue there...
> > >
> > >
> > you need cross-version compression for this case.
>
> what u mean cross-version compression? interesting name. :P

Compression of the files' different versions together; see one of
Hans' previous posts in this thread (in the archive or otherwise). 
-.-'

That way, if there is version X which is a file, and verison Y is just
a line at the top, the compression eliminates the duplication, so
instead of

(old version + new version)
ABCDEF + XABCDEF
 on disk
it becomes something like
Y=ABCDEF
X + XY
 on disk  [note, I don't know squat about this, so an expert might
tell differently -- if so, believe him, because he'll probably be the
guy implementing this, when it/if gets implemented]

[not literally... hopefully you get what i mean by that]

> >
> > >Anyway, I think the main win is from copy-on-write for the whole file.
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> >
>
>


--
~Mike
 - Just my two cents
 - No man is an island, and no man is unable.

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