[Chandler-dev] Compaction feature

[Andi Vajda]

On Fri, 18 May 2007, D John Anderson wrote:

> How about doing the compact automatically, i.e. without any user 
> intervention, occasionally after you quit Chandler. That way our users don't 
> need to be bothered learning about Chandler's housekeeping details.

This works well if compacting were to take only a few seconds, as with a 
checkpoint. Compacting, when delayed for too long can take hours and always 
takes a few minutes at least.

> If you insist on having a dialog, how about always bringing it up when 
> compacting after quitting, but give it a single button: cancel, so you if you 
> do nothing it just works.

The dialog is a 'courtesy'. I could add a 'dont ask again' checkbox which 
would let it do its thing automatically. Note, that it would still do it in 
the foreground, so the app would appear to be unresponsive for the time of the 
compact. Again, technically, it could be done in the background, the app would 
pretend to be responsive, but compacting would take longer and the disruption 
for the user would be longer.

I think that the feedback I've gotten so far seems strongest in the area of 
"don't wait for my answer to proceed with the compact". I could change the 
current setup to have a better dialog that:
   - let's you pick a "don't ask me again, just do it option"
   - let's you trigger a backup first (just in case)
   - let's you cancel the compact while in progress
   - has a progress bar instead of using the status bar

It's more work but might be well worth the effort.

Andi..