Re: Introspection binary format comments

["Gustavo J. A. M. Carneiro" <gjc inescporto pt>]

On Sat, 2005-02-26 at 12:21 -0500, Matthias Clasen wrote:
>I have tried to incorporate most of the feedback in the next draft of
>the binary metadata format. One question I have not decided yet is 
>hashes vs directories: 
>
>- do we want hashes ?
>- if yes, where do we want them ? Likely candidates are a hash to 
>  lookup blobs listed in the directory, and a hash per interface
>  to look up the functions in that interface. With the extensibility
>  precautions added in the new draft, we should be able to add hashes
>  as they turn out to be necessary.

  An interesting idea is to have lazy hashes.  The hash table would be
initially empty.  When a blob is requested by name, glib would:
	1. lookup the name in the hash table
	2. if lookup succeeds:
	2.a    return blob
	3. do linear scan for the blob
	4. add name->blob to hash table
	5. return blob

  This would save on memory (since hash tables cannot be shared between
multiple processes, unlike the blobs) but still provide adequate speed
for frequently accessed items.

  One more thing, perhaps it pays off to have a single hash table for
interfaces types + methods.   Instead of a tree of hash tables, we could
have a flat hash table, with name mangling, eg. GtkLabel::set_text.
Personally I'm not 100% sure this is a good idea, but I leave the
thought for consideration...

  Regards.

-- 
Gustavo J. A. M. Carneiro
<gjc inescporto pt> <gustavo users sourceforge net>
The universe is always one step beyond logic