Solved 12-STABLE: why are the base-src twice as large as 12.1-REL src?

Mjölnir

Mjölnir

Sorry for asking such a stupid question...
I downloaded the sources with svnlite checkout https://svn.FreeBSD.org/base/stable/12 (according to the handbook) and noticed they are twice as large as the sources installed with 12.1-RELEASE.
What's the reason?

THX
 
The difference between the size of sources installed as part of installing a release vs the sources as checked out by SVN (or any other CM tool) is the metadata used by the CM tool; in the case of SVN, the "metadata" is basically a pristine copy of all the source files in order for SVN to be able to show you what you've modified without needing a connection to the SVN repository.
 
  • Does this mean the same data is transfered twice?
  • Or is svn smart enough to create the copies once a file is fetched?
  • RCS/CVS did not do that, you had to get a lock for a file before you could edit it and then CVS produced and stored only the diff(1) when you committed your changes. I'm getting old...
I have ZFS dedup enabled, zdb -DD shows exactly the amount of the sources (~512MB) with a reference count of 2, for about 1/2 of all ordinary files in /usr/src/12-STABLE, that would fit.
 
Pretty sure SVN does one transfer to fetch the file into the pristine metadata area, and then copies that to the 'working' directory.
 
ljboiler said:
Pretty sure SVN does one transfer to fetch the file into the pristine metadata area, and then copies that to the 'working' directory.
Click to expand...
The data volume of a svn checkout unfortunately points in the other direction, which disappoints me since it violates one of the basic principles of CS: not to add redundancy where it brings no benefit. There are many people with limited bandwidth and data volume, not only in the emerging countries.
  • I'll file in a bug report on subversion upstream (I have to stay calm and not insult them ;))
 
For those who have a limited bandwidth, and how don't really care about the 'history' of the files, svn fetch might be the way to go. You get a copy of the files, but no way to query the change history (or even figure out what exact version of the repository you have a copy of), and if you make local changes there's no way to easily see what change you made or commit that change (but only a select group are allow to do that anyway).
 
ljboiler said:
For those who have a limited bandwidth, and how don't really care about the 'history' of the files, svn fetch might be the way to go. You get a copy of the files, but no way to query the change history (or even figure out what exact version of the repository you have a copy of), and if you make local changes there's no way to easily see what change you made or commit that change (but only a select group are allow to do that anyway).
Click to expand...
OK, for just browsing/reading the sources that's an option. But to work on the sources, I need all that meta-data. Maybe the doubled volume comes fro this history meta-data? I'll see what the svn users tell me in reply to my bug report.
 
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