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On [[todo/auto-create_tag_pages_according_to_a_template]], [[chrysn]]
suggests:
> Instead of creating a file that gets checked in into the RCS, the
> source files could be left out and the output files be written as
> long as there is no physical source file (think of a virtual underlay).
> Something similar would be required to implement alias directive,
> which couldn't be easily done by writing to the RCS as the page's
> contents can change depending on which other pages claim it as an alias.
`add_autofile` could be adapted to do this, or a similar API could be
added.
This would also be useful for autoindex, as suggested on
[[plugins/autoindex/discussion]]. I'd also like to use it for
[[plugins/contrib/album]].
It could also be used for an [[todo/alias_directive]].
--[[smcv]]
--------------------------
[[!template id=gitbranch branch=smcv/ready/transient author="[[smcv]]"]]
[[!template id=gitbranch branch=smcv/ready/transient-recentchanges author="[[smcv]]"]]
[[!template id=gitbranch branch=smcv/ready/transient-tag author="[[smcv]]"]]
[[!tag patch]]
I think this branch is now enough to be useful. It adds the following:
If the `transient` plugin is loaded, `$srcdir/.ikiwiki/transient` is added
as an underlay. I'm not sure whether this should be a plugin or core, so
I erred on the side of more plugins; I think it's "on the edge of the core",
like goto.
Pages in the transient underlay are automatically
deleted if a page of the same name is created in the srcdir (or an underlay
closer to the srcdir in stacking order).
With the additional `ready/transient-tag` branch,
`tag` enables `transient`, and if `tag_autocreate_commit` is set to 0
(default 1), autocreated tags are written to the transient underlay.
There is a regression test.
With the additional `transient-autoindex` branch,
`autoindex` uses autofiles. It also enables `transient`, and if
`autoindex_commit` is set to 0 (default 1), autoindexes are written to
the transient underlay. There is a regression test. However, this branch
is blocked by working out what the desired behaviour is, on
[[todo/autoindex_should_use_add__95__autofile]].
> I wonder why this needs to be configurable? I suppose that gets back to
> whether it makes sense to check these files in or not. The benefits of
> checking them in:
>
> * You can edit them from the VCS, don't have to go into the web
> interface. Of course, files from the underlays have a similar issue,
> but does it make sense to make that wart larger?
> * You can know you can build the same site with nothing missing
> even if you don't there enable autoindex or whatever. (Edge case.)
>> I'm not sure that that's a huge wart; you can always "edit by
>> overwriting". If you're running a local clone of the wiki on your laptop
>> or whatever, you have the underlays already, and can copy from there.
>> Tag and autoindex pages have rather simple source code anyway. --s
> The benefit of using transient pages seems to just be avoiding commit
> clutter? For files that are never committed, transient pages are a clear
> win, but I wonder if adding configuration clutter just to avoid some
> commit clutter is really worth it.
>> According to the last section of
>> [[todo/auto-create_tag_pages_according_to_a_template]], [[chrysn]] and
>> Eric both feel rather strongly that it should be possible to
>> not commit any tags; in [[plugins/autoindex/discussion]],
>> lollipopman and [[JoeRayhawk]] both requested the same for autoindex.
>> I made it configurable because, as you point out,
>> there are also reasons why it makes sense to check these
>> automatically-created files in. I'm neutral on this, personally.
>>
>> If this is a point of contention, would you accept a branch that
>> just adds `transient` and uses it for [[plugins/recentchanges]],
>> which aren't checked in and never have been? I've split the
>> branch up in the hope that *some* of it can get merged.
>>
>> One potentially relevant point is that configuration clutter only
>> affects the site admin whereas commit clutter is part of the whole
>> wiki's history. --[[smcv]]
> Anyway, the configurability
> appears subtly broken; the default is only 1 if a new setup file is
> generated. With an existing setup file, the 'default' values in
> `getsetup` don't take effect, so it will default to undef, which
> is treated the same as 0. --[[Joey]]
>> Fixed in the branches, hopefully. (How disruptive would it be to have
>> defaults take effect whenever the setup file doesn't set a value, btw?
>> It seems pretty astonishing to have them work as they do at the moment.) --s
autoindex ignores pages in the transient underlay when deciding whether
to generate an index.
With the additional `ready/transient-recentchanges` branch, new recent
changes go in the transient underlay; I tested this manually.
Not done yet (in that branch, at least):
* `remove` can't remove transient pages: this turns out to be harder than
I'd hoped, because I don't want to introduce a vulnerability in the
non-regular-file detection, so I'd rather defer that.
> Hmm, I'd at least want that to be dealt with before this was used
> by default for autoindex or tag. --[[Joey]]
>> I'll try to work out which of the checks are required for security
>> and which are just nice-to-have, but I'd appreciate any pointers
>> you could give. Note that my branch wasn't meant to enable either
>> by default, and now hopefully doesn't. --[[smcv]]
* Transient tags that don't match any pages aren't deleted: I'm not sure
that that's a good idea anyway, though. Similarly, transient autoindexes
of directories that become empty aren't deleted.
> Doesn't seem necessary, or really desirable to do that. --[[Joey]]
>> Good, that was my inclination too. --s
* In my `untested/transient` branch, new aggregated files go in the
transient underlay too (they'll naturally migrate over time). I haven't
tested this yet, it's just a proof-of-concept.
> I can confirm that the behavior of autoindex, at least, is excellent.
> Haven't tried tag. Joey, can you merge transient and autoindex? --JoeRayhawk
>> Here are some other things I'd like to think about first: --[[Joey]]
>>
>> * There's a FIXME in autoindex.
>>
>> > Right, the extra logic for preventing autoindex pages from being
>> > re-created. This is taking a while, so I'm going to leave out the
>> > autoindex part for the moment. The FIXME is only relevant
>> > because I tried to solve
>> > [[todo/autoindex should use add__95__autofile]] first, but
>> > strictly speaking, that's an orthogonal change. --s
>> * Suggest making recentchanges unlink the transient page
>> first, and only unlink from the old location if it wasn't
>> in the transient location. Ok, it only saves 1 syscall :)
>>
>> > Is an unlink() really that expensive? But, OK, fixed in the
>> > `ready/transient-recentchanges` branch. --s
>> * Similarly it's a bit worrying for performance that it
>> needs to pull in and use `Cwd` on every ikiwiki startup now.
>> I really don't see the need; `wikistatedir` should
>> mostly be absolute, and ikiwiki should not chdir in ways
>> that break it anyway.
>>
>> > The reason to make it absolute is that relative underlays
>> > are interpreted as relative to the base underlay directory,
>> > not the cwd, by `add_underlay`.
>> >
>> > The updated `ready/transient-only` branch only loads `Cwd` if
>> > the path is relative; an extra commit on branch
>> > `smcv/transient-relative` goes behind `add_underlay`'s
>> > back to allow use of a cwd-relative underlay. Which direction
>> > would you prefer?
>> >
>> > I note in passing that [[plugins/autoindex]] and `IkiWiki::Render`
>> > both need to use `Cwd` and `File::Find` on every refresh, so
>> > there's only any point in avoiding `Cwd` for runs that don't
>> > actually refresh, like simple uses of the CGI. --s
>> * Unsure about the use of `default_pageext` in the `change`
>> hook. Is everything in the transientdir really going
>> to use that pageext? Would it be better to look up the
>> complete source filename?
>>
>> > I've updated `ready/transient` to do a more thorough GC by
>> > using File::Find on the transient directory. This does
>> > require `File::Find` and `Cwd`, but only when pages change,
>> > and `refresh` loads both of those in that situation anyway.
>> >
>> > At the moment everything in the transientdir will either
>> > have the `default_pageext` or be internal, although I
>> > did wonder whether to make [[plugins/contrib/album]]
>> > viewer pages optionally be `html`, for better performance
>> > when there's a very large number of photos. --s
--------------------------
## An earlier version
I had a look at implementing this. It turns out to be harder than I thought
to have purely in-memory pages (several plugins want to be able to access the
source file as a file), but I did get this proof-of-concept branch
to write tag and autoindex pages into an underlay.
This loses the ability to delete the auto-created pages (although they don't
clutter up git this way, at least), and a lot of the code in autoindex is
probably now redundant, so this is probably not quite ready for merge, but
I'd welcome opinions.
Usage: set `tag_underlay` and/or `autoindex_underlay` to an absolute path,
which you must create beforehand. I suggest *srcdir* + `/.ikiwiki/transient`.
Refinements that could be made if this approach seems reasonable:
* make these options boolean, and have the path always be `.ikiwiki/transient`
* improve the `remove` plugin so it also deletes from this special underlay
>> Perhaps it should be something more generic, so that other plugins could use it (such as "album" mentioned above).
>> The `.ikiwiki/transient` would suit this, but instead of saying "tag_underlay" or "autoindex_underlay" have "use_transient_underlay" or something like that?
>> Or to make it more flexible, have just one option "transient_underlay" which is set to an absolute path, and if it is set, then one is using a transient-underlay.
>> --[[KathrynAndersen]]
>>> What I had in mind was more like `tag_autocreate_transient => 1` or
>>> `autoindex_transient => 1`; you might conceivably want tags to be
>>> checked in but autoindices to be transient, and it's fine for each
>>> plugin to make its own decision. Going from that to one boolean
>>> (or just always-transient if people don't think that's too
>>> astonishing) would be trivial, though.
>>>
>>> I don't think relocating the transient underlay really makes sense,
>>> except for prototyping: you only want one, and `.ikiwiki` is as good
>>> a place as any (ikiwiki already needs to be able to write there).
>>>
>>> For [[plugins/contrib/album]] I think I'd just make the photo viewer
>>> pages always-transient - you can always make a transient page
>>> permanent by editing it, after all.
>>>
>>> Do you think this approach has enough potential that I should
>>> continue to hack on it? Any thoughts on the implementation? --[[smcv]]
>>>> Ah, now I understand what you're getting at. Yes, it makes sense to put transient pages under `.ikiwiki`.
>>>> I haven't looked at the code, but I'd be interested in seeing whether it's generic enough to be used by other plugins (such as `album`) without too much fuss.
>>>> The idea of a transient underlay gives us a desirable feature for free: that if someone edits the transient page, it is made permanent and added to the repository.
>>>>
>>>> I think the tricky thing with removing these transient underlay pages is the question of how to prevent whatever auto-generated the pages in the first place from generating them again - or, conversely, how to force whatever auto-generated those pages to regenerate them if you've changed your mind.
>>>> I think you'd need something similar to `will_render` so that transient pages would be automatically removed if whatever auto-generated them is no longer around.
>>>> -- [[KathrynAndersen]]
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