Re: Lockless Refs? (Was [PATCH] refs: do not use cached refs in repack_without_ref)

[Jeff King <peff@peff.net>]

On Fri, Dec 28, 2012 at 07:50:14AM -0700, Martin Fick wrote:

> Hmm, actually I believe that with a small modification to the 
> semantics described here it would be possible to make multi 
> repo/branch commits work.   Simply allow the ref filename to 
> be locked by a transaction by appending the transaction ID to 
> the filename.  So if transaction 123 wants to lock master 
> which points currently to abcde, then it will move 
> master/abcde to master/abcde_123.  If transaction 123 is 
> designed so that any process can commit/complete/abort it 
> without requiring any locks which can go stale, then this ref 
> lock will never go stale either (easy as long as it writes 
> all its proposed updates somewhere upfront and has atomic 
> semantics for starting, committing and aborting).  On commit, 
> the ref lock gets updated to its new value: master/newsha and 
> on abort it gets unlocked: master/abcde.

Hmm. I thought our goal was to avoid locks? Isn't this just locking by
another name?

I guess your point is to have no locks in the "normal" case, and have
locked transactions as an optional add-on?

-Peff