=head1 FAQ

=over

=item What is this FAQ about?

This FAQ is about the scripts that come with the Perl::Repository::APC
module. The README gives an overview, each script has a manpage, and
this FAQ is about practical usage questions.

=item How much disk space do I need to run buildaperl or binsearchaperl?

At the time of this writing (2003-03), the APC contains 18850 patches
and all directories together occupy on my disk 630 MB. If you want to
operate on a full APC, you do not need all of this. You only need the
directories APC/5* and APC/perl-current-diffs. These currently add up
to 500 MB.

If you only want to examine a subset, you can reduce the disk space
needed significantly.

The most space on my installation though is not taken by the
repository mirror but by the cache of installed perls I accumulate
when I run binsearchapler regualarly. These need unlimited diskspace
in theory. But the binary search algorithm finds its target with only
at most 15 compilations if you have no cache, so you can delete the
cache when you're done and one GB will suffice to successfully run
binsearchaperl.

=item How can I run binary searches that need modules from CPAN?

Use the --prep switch to binsearchaperl to run a script that installs
the needed module from CPAN. The output of that script is ignored.

=item Can I use binsearchaperl with a partial mirror of the APC?

If you want to only track, say, bleadperl, you need to mirror the
directory associated with bleadperl (at the time of this writing
5.9.0) and the directory that contains the basis for bleadperl (at the
time of this writing 5.8.0). See the sample Makefile in the eg
directory how to create and maintain a custom subset of APC.

=item How much resources do I need for a subversion repository of the whole APC

Last time I did that with subversion 0.19 and Berkeley-DB 4.0.14. The
APC repository was close to change 19000. The C<db> directory of the
subversion ended up with 8.6 GB for about 15000 revisions. The
procedure took about 12 hours on an athlon 1 GHz. By deleting all the
log files with

    db_archive | xargs rm

the subversion repository shrunk to 525 MB.


=back

