[[plugins/autoindex/discussion]]. I'd also like to use it for
[[plugins/contrib/album]].
-One refinement I'd suggest is that if the transient page is edited,
-its transient contents are evaluated and used as the initial
-content for the edit box; after that, it'd become a static page. --[[smcv]]
+It could also be used for an [[todo/alias_directive]].
+
+--[[smcv]]
--------------------------
-[[!template id=gitbranch branch=smcv/transient author="[[smcv]]"]]
+[[!template id=gitbranch branch=smcv/ready/transient 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 with the default extension 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).
+
+`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.
+
+`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.
+
+> 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. 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?
+>>
+>> 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]]
+
+>> Noted. I assume a `checkconfig` hook is the way to fix this. --s
+
+autoindex ignores pages in the transient underlay when deciding whether
+to generate an index.
+
+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. --[[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. I've started on regression tests for this, but I'll
+>>> need to rummage through the commit log for the exact requirements
+>>> and the reasoning behind them, so it could take a while. --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. --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. I could conditionalize the use of `Cwd` on
+>>> `wikistatedir` not being absolute, though, which in practice
+>>> will only happen for unusual deployments (like the docwiki);
+>>> or I could add some mechanism by which you can add a
+>>> cwd-relative underlay? --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?
+
+>>> 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.
+>>>
+>>> A more thorough garbage-collection mechanism would be to
+>>> use File::Find on the transient directory; I'll get there
+>>> eventually. --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
sipb-www / ikiwiki.git / blobdiff