From 7bfa77380ac1fda68d224343c46b310779ce9980 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: tycho garen Date: Thu, 26 Jan 2012 21:28:19 -0500 Subject: [PATCH] comment to multi-threading discussion --- doc/todo/multi-thread_ikiwiki.mdwn | 25 +++++++++++++++++++++++++ 1 file changed, 25 insertions(+) diff --git a/doc/todo/multi-thread_ikiwiki.mdwn b/doc/todo/multi-thread_ikiwiki.mdwn index 396037fa7..3838103ff 100644 --- a/doc/todo/multi-thread_ikiwiki.mdwn +++ b/doc/todo/multi-thread_ikiwiki.mdwn @@ -10,3 +10,28 @@ Disclaimer: I know nothing of the Perl approach to parallel processing. > I agree that it would be lovely to be able to use multiple processors to speed up rebuilds on big sites (I have a big site myself), but, taking a quick look at what Perl threads entails, and taking into acount what I've seen of the code of IkiWiki, it would take a massive rewrite to make IkiWiki thread-safe - the API would have to be completely rewritten - and then more work again to introduce threading itself. So my unofficial humble opinion is that it's unlikely to be done. > Which is a pity, and I hope I'm mistaken about it. > --[[KathrynAndersen]] + +> > I have much less experience with the internals of Ikiwiki, much +> > less Multi-threading perl, but I agree that to make Ikiwiki thread +> > safe and to make the modifications to really take advantage of the +> > threads is probably beyond the realm of reasonable +> > expectations. Having said that, I wonder if there aren't ways to +> > make Ikiwiki perform better for these big cases where the only +> > option is to wait for it to grind through everything. Something +> > along the lines of doing all of the aggregation and dependency +> > heavy stuff early on, and then doing all of the page rendering +> > stuff at the end quasi-asynchronously? Or am I way off in the deep +> > end. +> > +> > From a practical perspective, it seems like these massive rebuild +> > situations represent a really small subset of ikiwiki builds. Most +> > sites are pretty small, and most sites need full rebuilds very +> > very infrequently. In that scope, 10 minute rebuilds aren't that +> > bad seeming. In terms of performance challenges, it's the one page +> > with 3-5 dependency that takes 10 seconds (say) to rebuild that's +> > a larger challenge for Ikiwiki as a whole. At the same time, I'd +> > be willing to bet that performance benefits for these really big +> > repositories for using fast disks (i.e. SSDs) could probably just +> > about meet the benefit of most of the threading/async work. +> > +> > --[[tychoish]] -- 2.26.2