Re: [9fans] Update on Fossil+Venti Stuff

[Martin Neubauer <m.ne@gmx.net>]

Fossil is more like a write _buffer_ for venti. The interaction with venti
takes place during the nightly dumps (at 5am for a default install; can be
configured according to your needs). Fossil also regularly takes snapshots
that aren't archived to venti. (Again, for a default setup snapshots every
hour, kept for 8 days; can be configured otherwise.) The snapshots are taken
for files that changed since the last snaptime; dumps are taken from files
where the current epoch is greater than the last written to venti. Those
procedures are quite well documented.

The problems seem to arise when you write lots of new data between dumps
(more than the fossil size; can be less when taking into account
intermediate snapshots). I've been thinking about ways to cope with that
lately, but wasn't too eager to post here until I'd actually have time 
to really delve into it (next month, or so). At the moment those are little
more than some elaborations of possibilities already mentioned in the
archives. I could do a write-up of what I could think of so far later
tonight when I'm back home if there is wider interest in exploring possible
enhancements (I'm not thinking of those asfixes) to fossil. I think it
could be worthwhile, though.

	Martin

P.S. I'm sure one could describe the current workings in more detail, but
I'm too much in a hurry now.