mmm​.s‑ol.nu

Besides some smaller fixes with the styling of the page, and in particular the diagrams introduced in 2019-10-24, I finally (re-)implemented children-ordering in the fs-store of mmmmfs (the sql store is still missing it, but I am not currently using it either) [a62f63b]: Files on the regular filesystem don’t have a particular order, but in mmmfs the order of children is is guaranteed, so that arranging children in a particular order becomes a meaningful tool.

To store the ordering data, a ‘magic’ file called $order is (optionally) stored in each directory in the filesystem. The file lists all child fileders by name in the given order. When the children of a fileder are requested (in list_fileders_in or get_index, which relies on the former), all children that are mentioned in $order are returned in that order, while all remaining children are sorted alphabetically and appended at the end of the list. This way the order is guaranteed to be stable even if no $order file is specified, or when the $order file has not been updated after adding new children.

Here is the commented implementation in MoonScript:

  list_fileders_in: (path='') =>
    -- create a mapping of all child-fileders
    -- in 'entries' (name -> path)
    entries = {}
    for entry_name in lfs.dir @root .. path
      continue if '.' == entry_name\sub 1, 1
      entry_path = @root .. "#{path}/#{entry_name}"
      if 'directory' ~= lfs.attributes entry_path, 'mode'
        continue

      entries[entry_name] = "#{path}/#{entry_name}"

    -- where we will store our sorted list of children
    sorted = {}

    -- check for existance of the order file
    order_file = @root .. "#{path}/$order"
    if 'file' == lfs.attributes order_file, 'mode'
      for line in io.lines order_file
        path = assert entries[line], "entry in $order but not on disk: #{line}"

        -- add all $order-entries to the sorted output in the same order they appear.
        -- also flag these entries as already added
        table.insert sorted, path
        sorted[line] = true

    -- find the he remaining (non-flagged) entries, sort them alphabetically
    -- and then append them to the sorted output list
    entries = [path for entry, path in pairs entries when not sorted[entry]]
    table.sort entries
    for path in *entries
      table.insert sorted, path

    -- return an iterator over the sorted output
    coroutine.wrap ->
      for path in *sorted
        coroutine.yield path

The interface for reordering fileders is still missing in the code, and just while writing this I realized that the current implementation is in fact buggy: when a fileder that is mentioned in $order is deleted via the stores.fs API, it is not removed from $order, causing an error the next time the fileder is listed. I will probably get around to fixing both of these problems when I build the corresponding UI.