expire and history format

[Heath Kehoe]

>
>Igor Timkin <ivt at gamma.ru> writes:
>
>> And second and main. What's about to convert history to binary format ?
>> History has fix format line. I has pathes (not full) against
>> current-199904XX.  Binary format will reduce CPU/disk/VM usage and
>> simplify C code.

I would like to see this patch.

>That's definitely the future intention.  However, I want to put an API
>interface on front of the history file before doing that so that we can
>continue to read older history formats and to make the transition
>smoother, as well as allow people to play with a variety of different
>history formats.

I agree that a history API is the way to go, but we should at least make
Igor's patch available (say, in contrib/) because it's a good idea and
provides an immediate benefit.  For example, on my server it would decrease
this size of the history file from 805 MB to 497 MB.

>
>I'd be glad to see someone work on that; I haven't had a lot of time to
>get it started, unfortunately.  :/
>

I may be able to work on the history API soon.

-heath