Re: [PATCH v2 00/13] literal folder: prefix, new path: prefix

[Jani Nikula <jani@nikula.org>]

On Sun, 02 Mar 2014, David Bremner <david@tethera.net> wrote:
> Jani Nikula <jani@nikula.org> writes:
>>
>> I've dropped most of the content in patches 7 and 10 due to their
>> size. The patches (and the whole series) are available in the
>> boolean-folder-and-path-v2 branch at
>> git://gitorious.org/jani/notmuch.git. Web interface at
>> https://gitorious.org/jani/notmuch/commits/0b3dd2d1cc6c413ea07ea326883ac448499c0e79.
>>
>
> Hi Jani;
>
> I put a some proposed changes at 
>
>   http://pivot.cs.unb.ca/git?p=notmuch.git;a=shortlog;h=refs/heads/boolean-folder-and-path-v2
>
> After playing with it a bit, I decided to 
>
>       - leave the source for the corpuses in the main tree. As we
>         discussed, we don't expect them to change much, and they are
>         text files.
>
>       - store the binary database blobs externally. We could make the
>         same argument about infrequent changes here, except that even
>         the tiniest change will in practice require a whole new copy be
>         stored.
>
>         - compute a checksum file
>         - test: add machinery to fetch and publish test databases
>         - test: commit database-v1.tar.xz checksum, ignore actual database
>
>        - this is an independant bug fix that should probably be pushed anyway:
>
>          - test: don't use $(dir) in recipes.
>
>       - I also made some unrelated changes including switching to xz
>         compression. I intentionally didn't squash my patches into yours
>         so you see and decide
>
>         - convert to XZ compression
>         - convert test to XZ
>
>         Originally I thought metadata in the database tarball is
>         needed. It turns out not. I think it's harmless, but feel free
>         to drop it.
>
>         - add some metadata to the database tarball

I'm fine with all of the above.

>       - I struggled to find a way that would allow people to manage the
>         tarballs in a nice way while not requiring everyone to
>         install/learn new tools. My conclusion is in
>       
>         - test: add support for git annex managing test databases
>
> We still need to think about what to do for people installing from
> tarballs. As it stands they will need to either have network access or
> skip the relevant tests. Probably at least one followup patch is needed
> here. The alternative would be to include the database tarballs in the
> source; this will pretty quickly double the size of the source tarball.

I think we should use the prereq mechanism in the tests to check if a
required test database is in place, skipping the test if not. This
should be fairly straightforward to do, and does not care *how* the test
database is to be fetched. (I'm undecided whether the test should verify
the checksum, or the part that fetches the database. Minor detail.)

I know git annex in principle, but don't have any practical experience
with it. I don't really have any ideas for that.


BR,
Jani.