Re: overly aggressive memory usage by sort.c

[Jim Meyering]

Pádraig Brady wrote:
> On 07/11/2012 12:17 AM, Paul Eggert wrote:
>> On 07/10/2012 07:31 AM, Jeff Janes wrote:
>>> Yes, that fixed the problem.
>>
>> OK, thanks for checking; I pushed it into the coreutils
>> master on savannah.
>
> Probably worth mentioning in NEWS because
> of the significant potential performance impact?

Yes, definitely.  Good catch.

> commit 96168117cbde9cb68dabbce2cf34848957462d49
> Author: Pádraig Brady <address@hidden>
> Date:   Thu Jul 12 15:02:19 2012 +0100
>
>     doc: mention the improved sort memory allocation
>
>     * NEWS: Mention the improvement.
>
> diff --git a/NEWS b/NEWS
> index 3aff3a8..836ecec 100644
> --- a/NEWS
> +++ b/NEWS
> @@ -52,6 +52,10 @@ GNU coreutils NEWS                                    -*- 
> outline -*-
>    or unwritable output.  Sort now diagnoses certain errors at start-up,
>    rather than after potentially expensive processing.
>
> +  sort by default, will not directly use more than 75% of physical memory,

How about changing tense and moving the "by default"?

     sort now allocates no more than 75% of physical memory by default,

> +  to better share system resources, and thus operate more efficiently.
> +  [The default max memory usage changed from 50% to 100% in coreutils-8.16]

Thanks.