[Vm-dev] DirectoryPlugin updated on SqueakSource

[Eliot Miranda]

Hi David,

On Sat, Dec 12, 2015 at 2:58 PM, David T. Lewis <lewis at mail.msen.com> wrote:

>
> A few years ago (well, more than a few), I implemented DirectoryPlugin.
> This claimed to (and I believe actually did) provide very large performance
> benefits on images of that time. It also required some intrusive changes
> on the image side, so it really was not appropriate for integration into
> the image.
>
> I recently updated the primitive and provided a separate image side access
> class, This is now on SqueakSource.com as package DirectoryPlugin.
>
> Since this was originally written circa 2003, the Squeak image has
> apparently
> improved immensely. The directory stream primitives, which were the
> original
> motivation for writing it, no longer provide any benefit at all. In fact,
> they seem to be slightly slower than the standard (modern) image).
>
> The file stat primitives do provide substantial performance benefit, so
> these may still be of interest for modern images.
>

Then what's involved in integrating only the stat primitives?  Both in the
plugin and the image?


>
> Here is the description from SqueakSource:
>
> -------
> Project Description
>
> Home page http://wiki.squeak.org/squeak/2274
>
> DirectoryPlugin provides access to a Posix directory stream for efficient
> access to directory contents. It also provides methods for testing file
> status and how to creating directory entries for a files and directories.
>
> The directory stream primitives use the address of a directory stream as
> a handle to identify a directory stream. This permits several directory
> streams to be opened and manipulated independently by separate Smalltalk
> processes. However, care must be taken to avoid passing the handle for an
> invalid directory stream (such as one which has already been closed) to
> one of these methods.
>
> The plugin has been tested on Linux and on Windows. The directory stream
> support produces a performance improvement only on Unix (Linux) systems.
> The file access primitives provide substantial improvements for both Unix
> and Windows systems. Other platforms have not been tested.
>
> DirectoryPluginAccess provides access to primitives in DirectoryPlugin,
> along with utility methods for various directory and file access functions.
>
> Performance characteristics have changed significantly since Squeak circa
> 2003. The readdir() primitives no longer provide any benefit, but the file
> testing primitives still yield a couple orders of magnitude improvement
> for some functions.
>
>


-- 
_,,,^..^,,,_
best, Eliot
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