[p4] yet again

[Steve M. Robbins]

[This is my third try at sending.  Apologies if you have
seen this twice already.]

On Thu, May 03, 2007 at 12:01:49PM -0700, Jeff A. Bowles wrote:

> I would use the newer label spec feature, so that you could say
> "the label project1_build96_Mar15 is //depot/main/... up to change
> 12381". It's a small amount of programming (the "Revision:" field
> and the "View:" section of the label spec - perhaps 10-12 lines of
> Unix shell script at most) and has very low database storage overhead
> compared to using "p4 labelsync" for this situation.

I wonder if you could expand on this a bit.  

For example, what are you referring to by "newer label spec feature"?
On our 2006.1 server, at least, "Revision:" doesn't appear in the
label spec, so I assume you must be speaking of a newer p4.

I'm mainly curious about the comment regarding database overhead for a
label.  I'm new to p4 and naively a label seems like the right tool to
identify released code versions.  However, my boss -- who has
previously used p4 -- is allergic to labels and I think part of the
reason has to do with DB storage.  Is a label a lot of overhead?  I
imagine that a label is basically the same size as a changelist as
conceptually both have to store pairs of (filename,revision).

I just had a look at the 2006.2 version of p4guide and there I
see a discussion about "automatic" labels, that describes
the Revision field.  I guess this is what Jeff Bowles is referring
to.  An automatic label is described as a changelist alias, so I
imagine it to be a simple, O(1) space, entry in the DB.  Is this
what you are thinking of when you say it has

    very low database storage overhead compared to using "p4
    labelsync"

?

Thanks,
-Steve