Info Q article on DVCS - a request and some feedback

[Martin Pool]

> I wonder if we should have a "benchmark mode", i.e. some flag you can
> set to say "I want performance, not  correctness" that would turn off
> some of this checking. git and mercurial seem to prefer performance in
> most cases and allow extra options for extra correctness (checking).

If there's some check or secondary operation that turns out to be
expensive then I'd agree we should make it optional.  I don't think
--benchmark is such a good idea, because if it's done properly it may
be useful in non-benchmark situations, and also people actually
_doing_ benchmarks may be reluctant to turn it on if it is not
generally used.  Having added the option we can look at whether it
should be on by default.

I certainly added some unnecessary checking code in the early
releases.  I would distinguish between 'correctness' (which we always
strive for) and 'checking' (which should be mostly unnecessary if
you're sure you're correct.)  Rather than always checking things
implicitly, we can look at: instead adding a test that runs the code
then does the check; a separate check operation; an option to turn on
checking.

-- 
Martin <http://launchpad.net/~mbp/>