Re: Index format v5

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On 05/18/2012 05:38 PM, Thomas Gummerer wrote:

I suggest that you apply the same kinds of cleanups to
git-convert-index.py (which I personally haven't looked at yet at
all).  If you want my feedback on that script, please let me know
when you think it is ready.

That would be great, if you have the time to do it. I'm not
completely finished with it (docstrings and conflicted data writing
are still missing).

I've looked over the writing side of git-convert-index.py version
81411fe6c98, and here are my first comments:

* Please remove trailing whitespace from the source code.

* I suggest that you move constants and code shared by
  git-convert-index.py and git-read-index-v5.py into a library.  Though
  actually, given that git doesn't seem to have infrastructure for
  dealing with Python libraries, this might take some improvisation.

* Please use constants for all of the struct formats.  Constants have
  names, making them mostly self-documenting.

* write_directories() currently writes pathnames and fake data and
  stores file offsets in memory.  Later write_directory_data() runs
  through the file again, seek()ing over the filenames and filling in
  real data.

  Wouldn't it be easier for the first pass just to *compute* and
  record the offsets of the entries to RAM, without writing anything
  to disk, and leave all of the writing to the second pass?

* Instead of writing blank data, it is possible to seek() past it and
  start writing the next thing.  The skipped-over file contents are
  logically initialized to zero.

* When working with iteritems(), it is clearer to unpack the item
  pairs and give them names rather than working with d[0] and d[1];
  for example,

    -    for d in sorted(dirdata.iteritems()):
    +    for (pathname,entry) in sorted(dirdata.iteritems()):

* write_directories() returns a "dirdata" that is just an empty
  defaultdict.  This seems pointless.  Do you have future plans to
  change write_directories() to store something into the dictionary?

* The documentation for binascii.crc32() mentions that it gives
  inconsistent results (signed vs. unsigned) for different versions of
  Python.  Please ensure that you are using it in a way that is
  maximally portable.  (That seems to imply using (binascii.crc32(...)
  & 0xffffffff) and treating the result as unsigned.)

* At first I thought it was a little bit odd that you pass data
  structures around as dictionaries, but I didn't object.  But as I
  look at more and more code it seems more and more cumbersome.
  Therefore, I suggest that you define classes to hold the various
  entities that are manipulated by your programs, because:

  * A class definition is a good place to document exactly what fields
    an object is expected to have, and what they mean.

  * Access of instance fields (entry.path) is easier to read and type
    than dictionary access (entry["path"]).

  * The class definitions will translate pretty directly to C structs.

  The fact that class instances use a bit more memory than
  dictionaries is, I think, unimportant.  But if that really bothers
  you, you can use __slots__ to save some of the instance memory.

At a higher level:

* What if the offsets to each section were stored in the header, and
  the offsets recorded for dirs and files were relative to the start
  of the section (rather than relative to the start of the file)?  I
  think that this would leave open the possibility of formatting the
  sections in memory in parallel in a single pass, then dumping the
  sections to disk in a few big writes (though I'm not saying that this
  should be the *default* way of writing).

* Do you plan to write prototypes for some of the cool new
  functionality that v5 is intended to make possible?  For example,

  * reading a few specific entries out of an index file

  * updating single entries

  * adding/removing conflict data to an existing file

  * dealing with all of the issues that will come with supporting the
    mutation of an existing index file (i.e., locking, consistency
    checks, etc)

  As you probably know from discussions on IRC, I think that the last
  of these is the biggest risk to the success of the project.

I'm not sure about the read_tree_extensiondata method, if I should
extract a method, which only reads one entry, but I'm not sure that
would make any sense, since there would be a lot of parameters and
return values to the function.

If the index were represented by a class instance, then all of the information would be grouped together as a coherent whole that is easy to pass around.

The same thing is in the main method, where I'm not sure if it's
better to extract the read_index and write_index functions, or
just leave the code in the main method. My guess is that it makes
sense in the main method, since there are less calls, but it
doesn't make sense in the read_tree_extensiondata method?

Ditto.

Another thing I'm unsure about is the write_directory_data method,
if there is any way to replace the try/except with something
simpler?

With dictionaries, you can do

-        try:
-            flags = d[1]["flags"]
-        except KeyError:
-            flags = 0
+        flags = d[1].get("flags", 0)

If you convert to class instances, then presumably the constructor would set valid default values for all of the fields.

Michael

--
Michael Haggerty
mhagger@xxxxxxxxxxxx
http://softwareswirl.blogspot.com/
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