Subject: Re: space compression (again)

From: Derek Fawcus <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 15 Apr 2005 20:00:54 +0100

On Fri, Apr 15, 2005 at 02:45:55PM -0400, C. Scott Ananian wrote:
> > - we already have wasted space due to the low-level filesystem (as
> >   opposed to "git") usually being block-based, which means that space
> >   utilization for small objects tends to suck. So you really want to
> >   prefer objects that are several kB (compressed), and a small block just
> >   wastes tons of space.
> 
> Not on (say) reiserfs, and not over the network.  I'm proposing (at the 
> moment) easy conversion from chunked to unchunked disk representation,
> so that you can leave things unchunked if (for example) you know you're 
> running ext2 with a large block size.

Or if one does not care about space,  and simply want's speed,  add another
layer of indirection - a flattened container object which has hashses as
normal,  then as it's content simply has the 'chunk list object' and the
'chunk objects' concatenated.

It's then a per user / database as to if the flattened objects,  or the
heirarcal objects are storred locally.

DF