Re: [Evolution] Evo 0.8 & NFS

[John Affleck <jaffleck ping ne mediaone net>]

On Thu, Jan 11, 2001 at 05:45:31PM -0500, Jeffrey Stedfast wrote:
> "Downgrading" lock types is a bad idea I think. If fcntl doesn't work,
> then you don't know if it's because the system doesn't support it or if
> there's something else wrong...so switching to flock (which is broken on
> 90% of the systems anyway) is not a good idea.
>
> Having a user-setting isn't exactly a good idea either because the
> average user will not know the difference.
>
> This is why it's compile-time meant for the system admin to decide.

Disclaimer:  I know nothing about file locking, software development
        or anything else.  And it's way to early to be writing this. 
        So please feel free to drop this in the bit bucket, but...

OK.  So flock is broken, that I didn't know.  But I came up with two
scenarios where having an application-global file lock type seems less
than optimal:

1 - A mix of locally mounted and NFS mounted home directories.  It
seems that one would like to use fcntl for the locals and perhaps
flock or something else for the NFS.

2 - A change from an NFS mounted directory to a local one.  Do you
really want to recompile Evolution to support this ?

I'm not saying that downgrading is the right thing to do.  I don't
know.  I'm just making suggestions.  But I do think that Evolution
will need some kind of runtime configuration of locks.  But maybe
no-one else does it, so Evo doesn't either.

I do think that behavior on lock failure needs to be looked at a
little bit.  Getting an error message about 'no locks available'
doesn't seem terribly clear.  And the behavior from that point on is
(or was) a little inconsistent.

And just as a general note, (and please don't take this as a flame),
if Evolution is targeted at the desktop or the 'kinder, gentler
Linux', is having something as 'user' specific as locking a compile
time only option the right thing to do ?

I _really_ like Evolution.  I like the attitude behind the
development.  I want it to succeed.  I'm not saying that I've proven a
point, I'm just voicing a different opinion.  I'm perfectly content to
recompile with --file-locking=flock.

        Thanks,

        John A.