[MacPorts] #60628: Reduce disk writes

[MacPorts]

#60628: Reduce disk writes
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 Reporter:  ryandesign     |      Owner:  admin@…
     Type:  enhancement    |     Status:  new
 Priority:  Normal         |  Milestone:
Component:  buildbot/mpbb  |    Version:
 Keywords:                 |       Port:
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 The current mpbb/buildbot implementation causes large amounts of data to
 be written to disk, probably largely due to constantly activating and
 deactivating ports. This wears out disks that have a finite capacity to be
 rewritten. Can the amount of data written per build be reduced?

 Four years ago I set up new buildbot workers with new SSDs, which through
 all the writing we've been doing have now worn out. To date they've
 endured between 440 and 540 terabytes written to each disk on SSDs only
 rated to accommodate 150TBW. 2 of the 3 SSDs have already fully failed and
 the third will likely fail soon as well. I'm replacing the SSDs but it
 would be nice if the replacements lasted longer.

 For example, can we leave "all" ports activated and use trace mode? (We
 can't in fact leave ''all'' ports activated since some ports conflict with
 others, but we could for example leave non-conflicting ports activated.)

 Or can activating a port be accomplished by a less expensive means than
 extracting an archive? MacPorts base used to install the destrooted files
 into hidden directories and activating the port consisted only of creating
 hard links to the already existing files. This method was later removed
 from MacPorts base but it had the advantage that it would write less data
 to disk.

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Ticket URL: <https://trac.macports.org/ticket/60628>
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