1. Drive Fragmentation
- Posted by newphil82 Jul 06, 2016
- 1363 views
When I started coding ("in the Stone Age") disks were SLOW, and fragmentation was a BIG problem. When we tried to add a few lines to a source file, our editor generated a new file, so that we ended up with myfile(1), myfile(2) ... etc. We junked a BIG batch of old files in one session eventually, to minimize fragmentation. Today, we often forget the fragmentation problem?
Recently, I admit, I often have to make many corrections if I attempt a big Euphoria project. I hadn't realized how messy I'd been making my main drive. It was enough to be annoying.
Now I'm trying out a little USB stick to develop a group of files, whenever I can. At a good point, successful files can go onto the main drive - and the USB stick can be cleared, to "forget the mess".
But I've a feeling that there's a neater way, a clever editor, perhaps? - Phil
2. Re: Drive Fragmentation
- Posted by jimcbrown (admin) Jul 06, 2016
- 1348 views
When I started coding ("in the Stone Age") disks were SLOW, and fragmentation was a BIG problem. When we tried to add a few lines to a source file, our editor generated a new file, so that we ended up with myfile(1), myfile(2) ... etc. We junked a BIG batch of old files in one session eventually, to minimize fragmentation. Today, we often forget the fragmentation problem?
It's not as big a deal with modern filesystems and disks:
Recently, I admit, I often have to make many corrections if I attempt a big Euphoria project. I hadn't realized how messy I'd been making my main drive. It was enough to be annoying.
But I've a feeling that there's a neater way, a clever editor, perhaps? - Phil
Even vi lets you edit a file in place and overwrite the old one with your changes.
Now I'm trying out a little USB stick to develop a group of files, whenever I can. At a good point, successful files can go onto the main drive - and the USB stick can be cleared, to "forget the mess".
I feel obligated to point out to any newbies reading this that constantly filling up and then clearing a USB stick like this comes with its own dangers: http://www.zdnet.com/article/usb-drive-life-fact-or-fiction/
newphil82 is advanced enough to already know about this and to be able to deal with the dangers, but that may not be true for some of the lurkers on the forum...
3. Re: Drive Fragmentation
- Posted by _tom (admin) Jul 06, 2016
- 1322 views
When I started coding ("in the Stone Age") disks were SLOW, and fragmentation was a BIG problem. When we tried to add a few lines to a source file, our editor generated a new file, so that we ended up with myfile(1), myfile(2) ... etc. We junked a BIG batch of old files in one session eventually, to minimize fragmentation. Today, we often forget the fragmentation problem?
Fragmentation is a Microsoft problem.
Recently, I admit, I often have to make many corrections if I attempt a big Euphoria project. I hadn't realized how messy I'd been making my main drive. It was enough to be annoying.
I suggest using a Mercurial version control system. What you get is single archive of all of your changes. At each milestone you save your work. You can look back at your changes and make branches as you wish. What you see in your directory is just a clean set of files with your current editing. We use Mercurial for Euphoria source-code.
- Download Mercurial from https://www.mercurial-scm.org/
- Search for "Mercurial Tutorial" and you will get lots of resources.
Now I'm trying out a little USB stick to develop a group of files, whenever I can. At a good point, successful files can go onto the main drive - and the USB stick can be cleared, to "forget the mess".
But I've a feeling that there's a neater way, a clever editor, perhaps? - Phil
You can run Mercurial on your USB stick and make things even tidier. It will work with any editor.
Mercurial is a command-line program (Windows or Linux). You can find gui wrappers for Mercurial; I use http://easyhg.org/
(Windows and Linux). You get a nice graphical chart of your changes and branches.
_tom
