Re: [Monotone-devel] Re: RFC: Fake IDs

[Nathaniel Smith]

Since you haven't responded to this yet, I'll just assume for now that
the single global counter solution is a minimal, implemented,
incremental improvement over what we have now, and we can consider the
fake_rid_source approach as a possible second, further improvement.

On Wed, Jul 19, 2006 at 12:53:09AM -0700, Nathaniel Smith wrote:
> > I propose an Explicit and Sound Mechanism:
> > 
> > Make a class fake_rid_source that wraps a u64 counter and sequentially 
> > assigns "%40.40llX" rids. Construct one and have it hand out fake rids 
> > within the scope that you're using them. That makes the scope 
> > relationships of your fakes somewhat explicit (which is half of what I 
> > wanted with "checking the database") and still lets you generate a few 
> > within a function and throw them out without dragging a db handle into it.
> 
> Hmm.  I guess as compared to the single global counter of Zack's
> patch (IIUC), this has an advantage:
>   -- you must explicitly mark the scope of these rids in your code
> and a disadvantage:
>   -- there's nothing to enforce you did this right, except careful
>      code auditing[1]; in particular you might accidentally let two
>      fake rids from two different sources bump into each other
>      accidentally
> My knee-jerk reaction is that the advantage is only really an
> advantage if there's enforcement, but I dunno.

-- Nathaniel

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