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Fsyncers and curveballs (the Firefox 3 fsync() problem)

Fsyncers and curveballs (the Firefox 3 fsync() problem)

Posted May 27, 2008 10:03 UTC (Tue) by szh (guest, #23558)
In reply to: Fsyncers and curveballs (the Firefox 3 fsync() problem) by bojan
Parent article: Fsyncers and curveballs (the Firefox 3 fsync() problem)

again, does it give FF3 any technical superiority over the FF2, or only speed regression ?
As long as file is small imho thats a bad decision. (and yes, a backup copy of sqlite file +
removing fsync, would/will be a solution)


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Fsyncers and curveballs (the Firefox 3 fsync() problem)

Posted May 27, 2008 10:30 UTC (Tue) by bojan (subscriber, #14302) [Link]

I guess, by looking at FF3B5. FF developers also think so.

Believe it or not, I think this bug is a good thing. If you have a look at the bug itself:

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=421482

You'll see that important kernel folks got involved, so maybe some ext3 bugs will get fixed.
Also SQLite leading man got involved, so maybe it will get improved as a result. And finally
FF will be better for it.

It's just a bug. It will be fixed (actually, looks like it already was fixed). It's all good.

Fsyncers and curveballs (the Firefox 3 fsync() problem)

Posted May 27, 2008 16:19 UTC (Tue) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]

It's very good that the problem is found and it's getting fixed. It would probably help a
whole of of people and different applications.

It's still probably very silly to use a SQL database to store bookmarks, even if it's a very
light database engine. Seems like a bunch of people need to be smacked by a cluebat that a
lightly formatted flat text file is superior (simplier/faster) to a SQL database for most
things that people need a database for... (ie: storing small amounts of editable data in a
file on a filesystem)

Personally I liked the bookmarks.html. Makes it very easy to backup my bookmarks and use them
with/in other programs. 

Ever used bookmarks.html as a home page?

Fsyncers and curveballs (the Firefox 3 fsync() problem)

Posted May 27, 2008 21:19 UTC (Tue) by roc (subscriber, #30627) [Link]

The real need for a database isn't bookmarks, it's history.

Fsyncers and curveballs (the Firefox 3 fsync() problem)

Posted May 28, 2008 9:01 UTC (Wed) by IkeTo (subscriber, #2122) [Link]

> The real need for a database isn't bookmarks, it's history.

The real need for a database isn't history either.  It is extensions.  You can have a custom
format for history so that given an URL you know whether it is in it or not, and you can list
all of them in the order of time.  Easy.  But extension is different.  You don't really know
what they need, because each of them need different thing.  So your only option is to ship
something really generic, in other words, database.  If they have to ship a database anyway, I
don't see any reason they are not merging bookmarks and history into the same framework.

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