Subject: Re: [bug#51427] [PATCH] nix: libstore: Do not remove unused links when deleting specific items.

From: Ludovic Courtès <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 23 Jul 2022 01:07:10 +0200

Hi,

Maxime Devos <[email-masked]> skribis:

> On 22-07-2022 14:14, Ludovic Courtès wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> Liliana Marie Prikler<[email-masked]>  skribis:
>>
>>> I don't think deleting links will ever be fast on that disk.  But what
>>> I've been saying the whole time is that I don't always need the links
>>> deleted.  I think adding "expert" switches to skip these phases might
>>> actually be enough – after all, if I ever do want to run a full GC, the
>>> information ought to be the same, no?
>> The expert will have to know that skipping that phase will have the
>> effect of *not* freeing space on the device, so…
>
> I believe the word "expert" implies that the expert knows that,

Apologies for being elliptic.  My point here, as has been discussed
earlier in this thread, is that we can’t just skip that phase or we’d
simply leave files around without actually deleting them.

Thus, a command-line switch to skip the phase doesn’t seem valuable to
me because it’d let users run the GC in a way that doesn’t actually
collect garbage.

I hope this is clearer!

Thanks,
Ludo’.