Re: checking in >= 256k file fatally corrupts rcs file

[Don Hatch <hatch@plunk.org>]

On Tue, Oct 08, 2013 at 05:48:53PM -0600, Warren Young wrote:
> On 10/8/2013 04:22, Don Hatch wrote:
> >
> >Checking in a text file of size >= 256k
> >corrupts the rcs file, irretrievably losing most of the contents
> 
> It's documented in the rcs NEWS file:
> 
>     - Env var RCS_MEM_LIMIT controls stdio threshold.
> 
>       For speed, RCS uses memory-based routines for files up to
>       256 kilobytes, and stream-based (stdio) routines otherwise.
>       You can change this threshold value by setting the environment
>       variable ?RCS_MEM_LIMIT? to a non-negative integer, measured in
>       kilobytes.  An empty ?RCS_MEM_LIMIT? value is silently ignored.
> 
> So, use the new environment variable, or build up your huge diffs a
> few steps at a time, so as to avoid spamming this buffer.

Hi Warren,

Thanks for the pointer.

That quote certainly doesn't describe or justify the very serious
corruption bug I'm seeing in any way;
however, it seems very likely that the corruption bug
was introduced along with this new optimization feature
that you reference, so it's good information.

If it's indeed the case that this bug was introduced along with this
non-essential feature, it would be really good if the feature
could be backed out, and possibly re-introduced at a later time
after it has been re-worked so that doesn't break the product.

Don

-- 
Don Hatch
hatch@plunk.org
http://www.plunk.org/~hatch/

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