Re: And again memory usage...

Fabrice Popineau <[email protected]> writes:

> 
> > What we need is not a filename database.  What we need is a file
> > database.  We need to have all files in the texmf tree stored
> > compressed in a database.
> 
> Sure. The problem is to rely on some external tool to serve the
> files if you want to be cross platform compatible.

We already rely on some external tools to goof around with ls-R.
Well, almost.

> I don't think the current kpathsea API has ever been developed with
> this in mind. It is not reentrant.

Why would it need to be?

> Karel Skoupy kpathsea server is the closest thing I know of to meet
> your requirements (see TUG2002 proceedings ?).

The TUG2002 proceedings (arrived yesterday) contain merely the
abstract, not a finished paper.  It is not quite clear from the
abstract, but it would appear to me that the separate server process
merely is there to facilitate access to the file names, not the files
themselves.

A proper file database would also have advantages in multi-user
environments where one user is just in the middle of writing a file
(like a generated font or even ls-R) when another is just trying to
read it: with a proper database you can make sure that a user gets
either consistently an old version of a file after opening it or a
completed newer version, but not something half-baked in between.

-- 
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum