[Xapian-discuss] Re: 1.0 news, and a call for testing

[Richard Boulton]

Fabrice Colin wrote:
> On the same subject, I am experiencing a problem with locking.
> The sequence of events is as follows :
> 1. make sure no process uses the index I want to open (created with 0.9.x)
>    and that neither "flintlock" nor "flicklock" exist.
> 2. create a WritableDatabase object with
>    Xapian::WritableDatabase(path_to_the_index, Xapian::DB_CREATE_OR_OPEN)
> 3. catch DatabaseOpeningError exception, check that the message is about 
> the
>   version of Flint
> 4. try to overwrite the index with
>     Xapian::WritableDatabase(path_to_the_index, 
> Xapian::DB_CREATE_OR_OVERWRITE)
> 
> At step 3, flintlock exists, thus preventing step 4 which results in a
> DatabaseLockError
> ("Unable to acquire database write lock on
> /home/fabrice/.pinot/daemon: already locked").
> Am I right in thinking that the lock file should be removed before
> DatabaseOpeningError
> is thrown ?

The lock file shouldn't be removed, because flint uses higher level 
file-locking, rather than just testing for the presence of the lock 
file.  The lock on it should be released, though, when the Writable 
database fails to be opened, so the overwrite step should work.

I'll try and write a test case to simulate this situation, and reproduce 
it here.

-- 
Richard