[p4] Usefulness of labeling deleted files?

[Jay Glanville]

Hello all.

I was recently reviewing some of the labels on my system.  One of the
things I noticed was that many of my labels contain deleted files.

Now, the major reason I use labels is to be able to recreate some of my
important loadbuilds.  Labeling a deleted file doesn't really help
achieve this.  I mean, if I need file //depot/path/to/a.c#3, but not
//depot/path/to/b.c#4 (where #4 is the deleted revision), then why not
just have a.c#3 in the label?  Why tag both of these entries?

Why am I asking?  I have many static labels.  Each of these labels can
contain upwards of 60k files.  Due to history, these labels contain 1/3
deleted files.  If I was only labeling the non-deleted files, I could
reduce the size of these labels down to 40k.  

For example, if I had 100 static labels at 60k each, that's 60 million
entries in the db.labels file.  If I was only labeling non-deleted
files, then I could reduce this number to 40 million entries.  That
would help reduce the load on the server whenever I was dealing with
labels.

So, I guess I'm not actually asking a question, I'm just pondering out
loud ....


JDG

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Jay Dickon Glanville