From: Josh Steadmon <steadmon@google.com>
To: "brian m. carlson" <sandals@crustytoothpaste.net>,
Johannes Schindelin <Johannes.Schindelin@gmx.de>,
Derrick Stolee <stolee@gmail.com>,
Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>,
Derrick Stolee via GitGitGadget <gitgitgadget@gmail.com>,
git@vger.kernel.org, peff@peff.net, jrnieder@google.com,
Derrick Stolee <dstolee@microsoft.com>
Subject: Re: [PATCH 00/15] [RFC] Maintenance jobs and job runner
Date: Wed, 27 May 2020 15:39:07 -0700 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <20200527223907.GB65111@google.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <20200408000149.GN6369@camp.crustytoothpaste.net>
I'm late to the discussion, but I'd like to chime in here too.
On 2020.04.08 00:01, brian m. carlson wrote:
> Hey,
>
> On 2020-04-07 at 22:23:43, Johannes Schindelin wrote:
> > > If there are periodic tasks that should be done, even if only on large
> > > repos, then let's have a git gc --periodic that does them. I'm not sure
> > > that fetch should be in that set, but nothing prevents users from doing
> > > "git fetch origin && git gc --periodic".
> >
> > Hmm. Who says that maintenance tasks are essentially only `gc`? With
> > _maaaaaybe_ a `fetch` thrown in?
>
> What I'm saying is that we have a tool to run maintenance tasks on the
> repository. If we need to perform additional maintenance tasks, let's
> put them in the same place as the ones we have now. I realize "gc" may
> become a less accurate name, but oh, well.
>
> > > Let's make it as simple and straightforward as possible.
> >
> > I get the impression, however, that many reviewers here seem to favor the
> > goal of making the _patches_ as simple and straightforward as possible,
> > however, at the expense of the original goal. Like, totally sacrificing
> > the ease of use in return for "just use a shell script" advice.
>
> I think we can have both. They are not mutually exclusive, and I've
> proposed a suggestion for both.
>
> > > As for handling multiple repositories, the tool to do that could be as
> > > simple as a shell script which reads from ~/.config/git/repo-maintenance
> > > (or whatever) and runs the same command on all of the repos it finds
> > > there, possibly with a subcommand to add and remove repos.
> >
> > Sure, that is flexible.
> >
> > And it requires a ton of Git expertise to know what to put into those
> > scripts. And Git updates cannot deliver more value to those scripts.
>
> Perhaps I was unclear what I thought could be the design of this. My
> proposal is something like the following:
>
> git schedule-gc add [--period=TIME] [--fetch=REMOTE | --fetch-all] REPO
> git schedule-gc remove REPO
>
> The actual command invoked by the system scheduler would be something
> like the following:
>
> git schedule-gc run
>
> It would work as I proposed under the hood, but it would be relatively
> straightforward to use.
Regardless of what happens with the job-runner, I would like to see a
top-level command that performs a single iteration of all the
recommended maintenance steps, with zero configuration required, on a
single repo. This gives an entry point for users who want to manage
their own maintenance schedule without running a background process.
> > > I'm not opposed to seeing a tool that can schedule periodic maintenance
> > > jobs, perhaps in contrib, depending on whether other people think it
> > > should go. However, I think running periodic jobs is best handled on
> > > Unix with cron or anacron and not a custom tool or a command in Git.
> >
> > Okay, here is a challenge for you: design this such that the Windows
> > experience does _not_ feel like a 3rd-class citizen. Go ahead. Yes, there
> > is a scheduler. Yep, it does not do cron-like things. Precisely: you have
> > to feed it an XML to make use of the "advanced" features. Yeah, I also
> > cannot remember what the semantics are regarding missed jobs due to
> > shutdown cycles. Nope, you cannot rely on the XML being an option, that
> > would require Windows 10. The list goes on.
>
> I will freely admit that I know next to nothing about Windows. I have
> used it only incidentally, if at all, for at least two decades. It is
> not a platform I generally have an interest in developing for, although
> I try to make it work as well as possible when I am working on a project
> which supports it.
>
> It is, in general, my assumption, based on its wide usage, that it is a
> powerful and robust operating system with many features, but I have
> little actual knowledge about how it functions or the exact features it
> provides.
>
> I want a solution that builds on the existing Unix tools for Unix,
> because that is least surprising to users and it is how Unix tools are
> supposed to work. I think we can agree that Git was designed with the
> Unix philosophy in mind.
>
> I also want a solution that works on Windows. Ideally that solution
> would build on existing components that are part of Windows, because it
> reduces the maintenance burden on all of us. But unfortunately, I know
> next to nothing about how to build such a solution.
>
> > > I've dealt with systems that implemented periodic tasks without using
> > > the existing tools for doing that, and I've found that usually that's a
> > > mistake. Despite seeming straightforward, there are a lot of tricky
> > > edge cases to deal with and it's easy to get wrong.
> >
> > But maybe you found one of those issues in Stolee's patches? If so, please
> > do contribute your experience there to point out those issues, so that
> > they can be addressed.
>
> One of the benefits of using anacron on Unix is that it can skip running
> tasks when the user is on battery. This is not anything we can portably
> do across systems, nor is it something that Git should need to know
> about.
>
> > > We also don't have to reimplement all the features in the system
> > > scheduler and can let expert users use a different tool of their choice
> > > instead if cron (or the Windows equivalent) is not to their liking.
> >
> > Do we really want to start relying on `cron`, when the major platform used
> > by the target audience (enterprise software engineers who deal with rather
> > larger repositories than git.git or linux.git) quite obviously _lacks_
> > support for that?
>
> Unix users will be unhappy with us if we use our own scheduling system
> when cron is available. They will expect us to reimplement those
> features and they will complain if we do not. While I cannot name
> names, there are a nontrivial number of large, enterprise monorepos that
> run only on macOS and Linux.
Speaking purely as a user, I agree with this point. This is why I want a
single-iteration top-level maintenance command.
Once we have that, we can provide recommended configs for existing
scheduling solutions (cron, launchd, systemd, etc.) in contrib/. If the
Windows scheduler is cumbersome enough that users don't want to use it,
then I think it's perfectly reasonable to provide our own limited
job-runner in contrib/ as well, so long as we don't require people to
use it.
> That doesn't prevent us from building tooling that does the scheduling
> on Windows if we can't use the system scheduler, but it would be nice to
> try to present a relatively unified interface across the two platforms.
> --
> brian m. carlson: Houston, Texas, US
> OpenPGP: https://keybase.io/bk2204
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2020-05-27 22:39 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 55+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2020-04-03 20:47 [PATCH 00/15] [RFC] Maintenance jobs and job runner Derrick Stolee via GitGitGadget
2020-04-03 20:48 ` [PATCH 01/15] run-job: create barebones builtin Derrick Stolee via GitGitGadget
2020-04-05 15:10 ` Phillip Wood
2020-04-05 19:21 ` Junio C Hamano
2020-04-06 14:42 ` Derrick Stolee
2020-04-07 0:58 ` Danh Doan
2020-04-07 10:54 ` Derrick Stolee
2020-04-07 14:16 ` Danh Doan
2020-04-07 14:30 ` Johannes Schindelin
2020-04-03 20:48 ` [PATCH 02/15] run-job: implement commit-graph job Derrick Stolee via GitGitGadget
2020-05-20 19:08 ` Josh Steadmon
2020-04-03 20:48 ` [PATCH 03/15] run-job: implement fetch job Derrick Stolee via GitGitGadget
2020-04-05 15:14 ` Phillip Wood
2020-04-06 12:48 ` Derrick Stolee
2020-04-05 20:28 ` Junio C Hamano
2020-04-06 12:46 ` Derrick Stolee
2020-05-20 19:08 ` Josh Steadmon
2020-04-03 20:48 ` [PATCH 04/15] run-job: implement loose-objects job Derrick Stolee via GitGitGadget
2020-04-05 20:33 ` Junio C Hamano
2020-04-03 20:48 ` [PATCH 05/15] run-job: implement pack-files job Derrick Stolee via GitGitGadget
2020-05-27 22:17 ` Josh Steadmon
2020-04-03 20:48 ` [PATCH 06/15] run-job: auto-size or use custom pack-files batch Derrick Stolee via GitGitGadget
2020-04-03 20:48 ` [PATCH 07/15] config: add job.pack-files.batchSize option Derrick Stolee via GitGitGadget
2020-04-03 20:48 ` [PATCH 08/15] job-runner: create builtin for job loop Derrick Stolee via GitGitGadget
2020-04-03 20:48 ` [PATCH 09/15] job-runner: load repos from config by default Derrick Stolee via GitGitGadget
2020-04-05 15:18 ` Phillip Wood
2020-04-06 12:49 ` Derrick Stolee
2020-04-05 15:41 ` Phillip Wood
2020-04-06 12:57 ` Derrick Stolee
2020-04-03 20:48 ` [PATCH 10/15] job-runner: use config to limit job frequency Derrick Stolee via GitGitGadget
2020-04-05 15:24 ` Phillip Wood
2020-04-03 20:48 ` [PATCH 11/15] job-runner: use config for loop interval Derrick Stolee via GitGitGadget
2020-04-03 20:48 ` [PATCH 12/15] job-runner: add --interval=<span> option Derrick Stolee via GitGitGadget
2020-04-03 20:48 ` [PATCH 13/15] job-runner: skip a job if job.<job-name>.enabled is false Derrick Stolee via GitGitGadget
2020-04-03 20:48 ` [PATCH 14/15] job-runner: add --daemonize option Derrick Stolee via GitGitGadget
2020-04-03 20:48 ` [PATCH 15/15] runjob: customize the loose-objects batch size Derrick Stolee via GitGitGadget
2020-04-03 21:40 ` [PATCH 00/15] [RFC] Maintenance jobs and job runner Junio C Hamano
2020-04-04 0:16 ` Derrick Stolee
2020-04-07 0:50 ` Danh Doan
2020-04-07 10:59 ` Derrick Stolee
2020-04-07 14:26 ` Danh Doan
2020-04-07 14:43 ` Johannes Schindelin
2020-04-07 1:48 ` brian m. carlson
2020-04-07 20:08 ` Junio C Hamano
2020-04-07 22:23 ` Johannes Schindelin
2020-04-08 0:01 ` brian m. carlson
2020-05-27 22:39 ` Josh Steadmon [this message]
2020-05-28 0:47 ` Junio C Hamano
2020-05-27 21:52 ` Johannes Schindelin
2020-05-28 14:48 ` Junio C Hamano
2020-05-28 14:50 ` Jonathan Nieder
2020-05-28 14:57 ` Junio C Hamano
2020-05-28 15:03 ` Jonathan Nieder
2020-05-28 15:30 ` Derrick Stolee
2020-05-28 4:39 ` Johannes Schindelin
Reply instructions:
You may reply publicly to this message via plain-text email
using any one of the following methods:
* Save the following mbox file, import it into your mail client,
and reply-to-all from there: mbox
Avoid top-posting and favor interleaved quoting:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posting_style#Interleaved_style
List information: http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
* Reply using the --to, --cc, and --in-reply-to
switches of git-send-email(1):
git send-email \
--in-reply-to=20200527223907.GB65111@google.com \
--to=steadmon@google.com \
--cc=Johannes.Schindelin@gmx.de \
--cc=dstolee@microsoft.com \
--cc=git@vger.kernel.org \
--cc=gitgitgadget@gmail.com \
--cc=gitster@pobox.com \
--cc=jrnieder@google.com \
--cc=peff@peff.net \
--cc=sandals@crustytoothpaste.net \
--cc=stolee@gmail.com \
/path/to/YOUR_REPLY
https://kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/git-send-email.html
* If your mail client supports setting the In-Reply-To header
via mailto: links, try the mailto: link
Be sure your reply has a Subject: header at the top and a blank line
before the message body.
Code repositories for project(s) associated with this public inbox
https://80x24.org/mirrors/git.git
This is a public inbox, see mirroring instructions
for how to clone and mirror all data and code used for this inbox;
as well as URLs for read-only IMAP folder(s) and NNTP newsgroup(s).