Scalability: $config->pagefileExtendedPaths stable?

[Lutz]

We still have this warning in wire/config.php: "The extended file mapping feature is not yet widely tested, so consider it beta." Does anyone have $config->pagefileExtendedPaths in use on a production server?

[teppo]

I haven't used this feature myself, but for what it's worth this feature has been in the core for a very long time, and I haven't heard of any issues regarding it in years. As such, I'm pretty sure that the "beta" label is something you can safely ignore by now.

[Lutz]

@teppo I hope so. There's an open ticket "Feature-Request: More options how to store files under site/assets/files" from 2014, where @Soma warned regarding problems with pagefileExtendedPaths when using template cache and @ryan answered in his last comment: "That's a good point, as the structure is flat. Will have to revisit that
with a similar solution to the files at some point in the future." https://github.com/ryancramerdesign/ProcessWire/issues/432

[teppo]

@Lutz, note that pagefileExtendedPaths is all about /site/assets/files/, i.e. Pagefiles uploaded through the Admin or added via the API. What Soma and Ryan discuss in that issue is implementing a similar, but likely separate, feature for the files created by the built-in template cache feature (/site/assets/cache/Page/).

In other words that discussion is not about an issue with pagefileExtendedPaths, but rather a suggestion to add another similar feature for a different purpose ?

[Lutz]

@teppo Maybe I'm wrong, but no, the config option pagefileExtendedPaths is a result of that discussion and the comments of @Soma and @ryan refer to the concept of extended paths.

[teppo]

2 minutes ago, Lutz said:

@teppo Maybe I'm wrong, but no, the config option pagefileExtendedPaths is a result of that discussion and the comments of @Soma and @ryan refer to the concept of extended paths.

It can definitely get a bit confusing when multiple topics are discussed in single issue or thread ?

Anyway, template cache is a separate feature, and the files it creates are not stored under /site/assets/files/. In other words: pagefileExtendedPaths is a feature related to Pagefiles, and has no direct correlation with template cache files. The point here is that while template cache files can indeed suffer from the same limitation that resulted in the creation of the pagefileExtendedPaths feature, whether pagefileExtendedPaths is enabled or not has no effect on that.

If you're worried about scalability on the filesystem level, you may indeed want to steer away from the template cache feature – but this problem only comes into play when you have tens of thousands of pages with template caching enabled (32k+ for ext3 filesystem, 64k+ for ext4, etc.)

[Lutz]

Ok, I read the issue 432 thread again, so yes, the need to "revisit" (Ryan) could refer to the implementation of the template cache only. However, it would be good to know if pagefileExtendedPaths is a reliable option and I'm glad that you suspect that this is true.

[Lutz]

22 minutes ago, teppo said:

If you're worried about scalability on the filesystem level, you may indeed want to steer away from the template cache feature – but this problem only comes into play when you have tens of thousands of pages with template caching enabled (32k+ for ext3 filesystem, 64k+ for ext4, etc.)

@teppo Thank you very much. Yes, I plan to go with ProCache and to avoid template caching for most of the templates. I think I misunderstood the comment of Soma regarding the template cache problem, thanks for the hint.