Re: Why migrate to new backend format

[Xavier Bestel <xavier bestel free fr>]

> 	Seek time: I have ~350 .xml files in my ~/.gconfd, and also ~350
> directories (unsuprisingly). Each directory or xml file occupies a
> separate block, and there is a very significant cost to moving the heads
> to many of them to read them; at least, so the previous discussion, and
> my timings seem to show. [1]

Implementation detail :)
A filesystem like Reiserfs is supposed to take care about exactly that:
loads of files way smaller than a block.
But it's Linux-specific, of course.

> 	Slack file space: my ~/.gconf takes up ~2600 kb (du -k) but the sum of
> the file sizes is far smaller [ how do I count that easily ? ]

[xav bip:~]$ wc -c $(find ~/.gconf -type f)       (optionally | sort -n)
	Xav