[9fans] venti and "contrib": RFC

[tlaronde@polynum.com]

Hello,

Summary of the previous epidodes: My Plan9 installation was still the
initial one as far as partitionning is concerned. Since I had not
grasped the venti purpose, "other" was empty, everything going into
the venti archived. And I was doing a number of install/de-install
of kerTeX for tests purposes, boom!: "disk full" and need to find a way
to load an alternate root to fix things---or reinstall.

But this leads to questions regarding the "contrib" stuff.

When one has the sources, archiving with history the sources make sense.
To take the example of kerTeX, there is a map describing where to put
eventually a file, so the sources vary a little, but the result may be
arbitrary. Secondly, the binaries compiled from the sources may vary
even if the sources do not vary.

So the compiled result is not worth archiving. (The convenience to have
a fallback snapshot to not disrupt work is here; in case of bigger
disaster, the time needed to recompile everything is acceptable---for
kerTeX, even if the result is several tens of Mb, this is a matter of
minutes.) Furthermore, for an "experimental" work, archiving a transient
state is not worth the disk space.

With the design of namespace manipulations, a Plan9 user can "redirect"
the writes where he wants them to happen---venti or not venti, that is
the question.

But the user has to know. Is there a policy described somewhere?

The problem, I think, is that on "other" systems, one thinks backup and
archiving _after_---and decide what goes in backups. While here,
powerful tools are there, by default, but user may be unaware of
consequences. Perhaps should it be proposed by default, for the "let's
see what is Plan9", to get fossil only, and to switch to venti when
things are clear?

Cheers,
--
        Thierry Laronde <tlaronde +AT+ polynum +dot+ com>
                      http://www.kergis.com/
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