[p4] normdir ???

[Tony Sweeney]

Rick Macdonald wrote:
> Tony Sweeney wrote:
>   
>> Roy Smith wrote:
>>   
>>     
>>> By default, the "normdir" option is set in new client specs.  Why?   
>>> This seems counter-intuitive.  Is there some non-obvious problem I'm  
>>> going to encounter if I set "rmdir" on all my clients?
>>>   
>>>     
>>>       
>> Consider the case where you sync some source to a directory and run a 
>> build that leaves derived objects such as .o or .class files laying 
>> around.  Now sync the #0 revision of all the files that came from 
>> Perforce.  What should Perforce do with the directory?  The derived objects?
>>
>> Tony.
>>   
>>     
> Tony - in the example you've given, Perforce will do nothing regardless 
> of the setting. The Perforce client "rmdir" option only removes the 
> directory if it's empty. I've used the rmdir option for 10 years now 
> with no ill effects. I appreciate Roy's question. I've never thought of 
> a case where I wouldn't use the rmdir setting, but I assume there are some.
>
> ...RickM...
> _______________________________________________
> perforce-user mailing list  -  perforce-user at perforce.com
> http://maillist.perforce.com/mailman/listinfo/perforce-user
>
>
>   
Rick,

as Paul Goffin points out, this option wasn't there in early Perforce 
releases.  The default matches the original behaviour.  Next you have to 
consider the extent to which Perforce "controls" directories it 
creates.  Clearly somebody wanted it to remove them on sync #none or the 
feature wouldn't have been implemented.  But what to do if there are 
non-Perforce files present?  It seems that the answer is the 
time-honoured "punt".  Finally, as Biswajit points out, there is the 
cost; at minimum Perforce must run at least one stat system call on 
removing the final managed file from a directory.  It might be 
instructive to run some timings to see if this is significant.  And it 
might not remove the directory anyway depending on what it finds, so you 
still have to code for this case anyway if you really need to make the 
directory go away (if you are trying to clean up a build client or 
whatever).  Getting back to the original question, is there ever any 
case where setting rmdir could be considered harmful?  Probably not.  
How useful is it?  Discuss.

Tony.