Reclaiming repository disk space
January 23rd, 2006 at 3:18 pm (2 years, 3 months ago) by Andi Vajda under chandlerdbChandler’s repository is versioned. Like a subversion source code repository, changes to items are saved into the repository as coherent versions. This enables to later merge together changes that occurred in different threads or processes instead of serializing changes by locking resources.
After a while, however, older versions as well as deleted items end up using up a significant amount of space in the repository. Recently, Sleepycat released a new version of Berkeley DB making it possible to compact a set of database files thereby reclaiming unused disk space.
A new repository API, compact() deletes all old versions of items and their related data before calling the Berkeley DB compact() API. This new functionality is available through Chandler’s “Test” menu.
Purging old item versions out of a repository is irreversible. Backing up the repository first is recommended.
