Re: [Monotone-devel] cvs_import rewrite

[Nathaniel Smith]

On Thu, Dec 15, 2005 at 11:40:21AM +0100, Christof Petig wrote:
> (performance issues put aside (which is a very brave
> assumption)) 

I'm not sure they can be put aside in this case; cvssync talks to cvs,
and lets cvs do the actual reconstruction in this case, right?  The
problem is that using cvs to extract all file texts from a cvs repo is
O(n^2), while cvs_import, by reading the files directly, can be O(n).
There's a fair amount of real-world evidence that this difference is
critical, for real-world large repositories.

(For instance, my understanding is that cvs2svn used to also be O(n^2)
due to a bug, so when Danny Berlin was converting the gcc repository
to svn, he actually created a Frankensteinien combination of
monotone's cvs_import code and cvs2svn and used that.)

On the other hand, I don't see why cvs_import and cvssync couldn't
record what they've done in a compatible format, so that you can do a
cvs_import and then use the resulting repo with cvssync, for
instance...

-- Nathaniel

-- 
So let us espouse a less contested notion of truth and falsehood, even
if it is philosophically debatable (if we listen to philosophers, we
must debate everything, and there would be no end to the discussion).
  -- Serendipities, Umberto Eco