which came first, the chicken or the egg?

[ikiwiki] / doc / todo / transient_pages.mdwn

On [[todo/auto-create_tag_pages_according_to_a_template]], [[chrysn]]
suggests:

> Instead of creating a file that gets checked in into the RCS, the
> source files could be left out and the output files be written as
> long as there is no physical source file (think of a virtual underlay).
> Something similar would be required to implement alias directive,
> which couldn't be easily done by writing to the RCS as the page's
> contents can change depending on which other pages claim it as an alias.

`add_autofile` could be adapted to do this, or a similar API could be
added.

This would also be useful for autoindex, as suggested on
[[plugins/autoindex/discussion]] and [[!debbug 544322]]. I'd also like
to use it for [[plugins/contrib/album]].

It could also be used for an [[todo/alias_directive]].

--[[smcv]]

> All [[merged|done]] --[[Joey]] 

--------------------------

[[!template id=gitbranch branch=smcv/ready/transient author="[[smcv]]"]]
[[!tag patch]]

Related branches:

* `ready/tag-test`: an extra regression test for tags
  > merged --[[Joey]] 
* either `transient-relative` or `transient-relative-api`: avoid using `Cwd`
  on initialization
  > merged the latter --[[Joey]]
* `ready/transient-aggregate`: use for aggregate
  > merged --[[Joey]]
* `ready/transient-autoindex`: optionally use for autoindex,
  which is [[!debbug 544322]] (includes autoindex-autofile from
  [[todo/autoindex should use add__95__autofile]])
  > merged. I do note that this interacts badly with ikiwiki-hosting's
  > backup/restore/branch handling, since that does not back up the
  > transientdir by default, and so autoindex will not recreate the
  > "deleted" pages. I'll probably have to make it back up the transientdir
  > too. --[[Joey]]
* `ready/transient-recentchanges`: use for recentchanges
  > merged --[[Joey]] 
* `ready/transient-tag`: optionally use for tag (includes tag-test)
  > merged --[[Joey]]

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 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).

With the additional `ready/transient-tag` branch,
`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.

With the additional `transient-autoindex` branch,
`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. However, this branch
is blocked by working out what the desired behaviour is, on
[[todo/autoindex_should_use_add__95__autofile]].

> 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; in [[plugins/autoindex/discussion]],
>> lollipopman and [[JoeRayhawk]] both requested the same for autoindex.
>> 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? I've split the
>> branch up in the hope that *some* of it can get merged.
>>
>>> I will be happy to merge transient-recentchanges when it's ready.
>>> I see no obstacle to merging transient-tag either, and am not
>>> really against using it for autoindex or aggregate either
>>> once they get completed.
>>> I just wanted to think through why configurability is needed.
>>> --[[Joey]]
>>
>> 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. (Correction: It was not even the default then --[[Joey]])
> 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]]

>> Fixed in the branches, hopefully. (How disruptive would it be to have
>> defaults take effect whenever the setup file doesn't set a value, btw?
>> It seems pretty astonishing to have them work as they do at the moment.) --s

>>> Well, note that default is not actually a documented field in
>>> getsetup hooks at all! (It is used in IkiWiki.pm's own `getsetup()`, and
>>> the concept may have leaked out into one or two plugins (comments,
>>> transient)).
>>> 
>>> Running getsetup at plugin load time is something I have considered
>>> doing. It would simplify some checkconfig hooks that just set hardcoded 
>>> defaults. Although since dying is part of the getsetup hook's API, it
>>> could be problimaric.
>>> --[[Joey]]

autoindex ignores pages in the transient underlay when deciding whether
to generate an index.

With the additional `ready/transient-recentchanges` branch, 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, and now hopefully doesn't. --[[smcv]]

  >>> Opened a new bug for this, [[bugs/removal_of_transient_pages]]
  >>> --[[Joey]] 

* 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.

  > Now renamed to `ready/transient-aggregate`; it does seem to work fine.
  > --s

> 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. This is taking a while, so I'm going to leave out the
>>     > autoindex part for the moment. The FIXME is only relevant
>>     > because I tried to solve
>>     > [[todo/autoindex should use add__95__autofile]] first, but
>>     > strictly speaking, that's an orthogonal change. --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, fixed in the
>>   > `ready/transient-recentchanges` branch. --s

>>   >> It's not, but it's easy. :) --[[Joey]]

>> * 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, by `add_underlay`.
>>   >
>>   > The updated `ready/transient-only` branch only loads `Cwd` if
>>   > the path is relative; an extra commit on branch
>>   > `smcv/transient-relative` goes behind `add_underlay`'s
>>   > back to allow use of a cwd-relative underlay. Which direction
>>   > would you prefer?
>>   >
>>   > I note in passing that [[plugins/autoindex]] and `IkiWiki::Render`
>>   > both need to use `Cwd` and `File::Find` on every refresh, so
>>   > there's only any point in avoiding `Cwd` for runs that don't
>>   > actually refresh, like simple uses of the CGI. --s

>>   >> Oh, right, I'd forgotten about the horrificness of File::Find
>>   >> that required a chdir for security. Ugh. Can we just avoid
>>   >> it for those simple cases then? (demand-calculate wikistatedir)
>>   >> --[[Joey]] 

>>   >>> The reason that transientdir needs to be absolute is that it's
>>   >>> added as an underlay.
>>   >>>
>>   >>> We could avoid using `Cwd` by taking the extra commit from either
>>   >>> `smcv/transient-relative` or `smcv/transient-relative-api`;
>>   >>> your choice. I'd personally go for the latter.
>>   >>>
>>   >>> According to git grep, [[plugins/po]] already wants to look at
>>   >>> the underlaydirs in its checkconfig hook, so I don't think
>>   >>> delaying calculation of the underlaydir is viable. (I also noticed
>>   >>> a bug,
>>   >>> [[bugs/po:_might_not_add_translated_versions_of_all_underlays]].)
>>   >>>
>>   >>> `underlaydirs` certainly needs to have been calculated by the
>>   >>> time `refresh` hooks finish, so `find_src_files` can use it. --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?
>>
>>   > I've updated `ready/transient` to do a more thorough GC by
>>   > using File::Find on the transient directory. This does
>>   > require `File::Find` and `Cwd`, but only when pages change,
>>   > and `refresh` loads both of those in that situation anyway.
>>   >
>>   > 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. --s

>>   >> Oh, ugh, more File::Find... Couldn't it just assume that the
>>   >> transient page has the same extension as its replacement?
>>   >> --[[Joey]]

>>   >>> Good idea, that'll be true for web edits at least.
>>   >>> Commit added. --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
to write tag and autoindex pages into an underlay.

This loses the ability to delete the auto-created pages (although they don't
clutter up git this way, at least), and a lot of the code in autoindex is
probably now redundant, so this is probably not quite ready for merge, but
I'd welcome opinions.

Usage: set `tag_underlay` and/or `autoindex_underlay` to an absolute path,
which you must create beforehand. I suggest *srcdir* + `/.ikiwiki/transient`.

Refinements that could be made if this approach seems reasonable:

* make these options boolean, and have the path always be `.ikiwiki/transient`
* improve the `remove` plugin so it also deletes from this special underlay

>> Perhaps it should be something more generic, so that other plugins could use it (such as "album" mentioned above).
>> The `.ikiwiki/transient` would suit this, but instead of saying "tag_underlay" or "autoindex_underlay" have "use_transient_underlay" or something like that?
>> Or to make it more flexible, have just one option "transient_underlay" which is set to an absolute path, and if it is set, then one is using a transient-underlay.
>> --[[KathrynAndersen]]

>>> What I had in mind was more like `tag_autocreate_transient => 1` or
>>> `autoindex_transient => 1`; you might conceivably want tags to be
>>> checked in but autoindices to be transient, and it's fine for each
>>> plugin to make its own decision. Going from that to one boolean
>>> (or just always-transient if people don't think that's too
>>> astonishing) would be trivial, though.
>>>
>>> I don't think relocating the transient underlay really makes sense,
>>> except for prototyping: you only want one, and `.ikiwiki` is as good
>>> a place as any (ikiwiki already needs to be able to write there).
>>>
>>> For [[plugins/contrib/album]] I think I'd just make the photo viewer
>>> pages always-transient - you can always make a transient page
>>> permanent by editing it, after all.
>>>
>>> Do you think this approach has enough potential that I should
>>> continue to hack on it? Any thoughts on the implementation? --[[smcv]]

>>>> Ah, now I understand what you're getting at. Yes, it makes sense to put transient pages under `.ikiwiki`.
>>>> I haven't looked at the code, but I'd be interested in seeing whether it's generic enough to be used by other plugins (such as `album`) without too much fuss.
>>>> The idea of a transient underlay gives us a desirable feature for free: that if someone edits the transient page, it is made permanent and added to the repository.
>>>>
>>>> I think the tricky thing with removing these transient underlay pages is the question of how to prevent whatever auto-generated the pages in the first place from generating them again - or, conversely, how to force whatever auto-generated those pages to regenerate them if you've changed your mind.
>>>> I think you'd need something similar to `will_render` so that transient pages would be automatically removed if whatever auto-generated them is no longer around.
>>>> -- [[KathrynAndersen]]