THE FOLD / BOSS / THE CHOKE POINT / THE REBUILD SET
THE REBUILD SET
expense is the visible form of usefulness
1 WHAT IT IS · WHAT IT DOES · FACT OR FICTION
The cost of touching a file is not its size or its complexity. It is how many things sit above it in the graph, and that number varies enormously between files that look identical from the outside.
LIT verified live over 7 leaf files and 7 targets. Editing test.c rebuilds 1 target. Editing main.c, util.c, net.c or parse.c rebuilds 4. Editing config.h or util.h rebuilds 6. The mean is 4.14 and the spread is 5 — nothing visible in the source distinguishes the cheapest edit from the dearest.
LIT verified live over 7 leaf files and 7 targets. Editing test.c rebuilds 1 target. Editing main.c, util.c, net.c or parse.c rebuilds 4. Editing config.h or util.h rebuilds 6. The mean is 4.14 and the spread is 5 — nothing visible in the source distinguishes the cheapest edit from the dearest.
2 HOW IT WAS WEAVED · AI + HUMAN
This is the same reverse closure THE INCREMENTAL BUILD computes, sorted by cost rather than by file, because the ordering is the finding.
AVAN (AI) reports the mean and immediately the spread, because on this distribution the mean describes no file at all. Two files cost 6, four cost 4, one costs 1, and 4.14 is a number nobody ever pays.
AVAN (AI) reports the mean and immediately the spread, because on this distribution the mean describes no file at all. Two files cost 6, four cost 4, one costs 1, and 4.14 is a number nobody ever pays.
3 ONE DIMENSION
Seven files, sorted by what they cost.
4 TWO DIMENSIONS · INTERACTIVE
Compare two files side by side.
5 THREE DIMENSIONS + AVAN’S INVERSE
The green forward object: the weight above a file.
AVAN’s addition (the inverse-companion): the forward reading is that some files are expensive to change. The inverse is that expense is the visible form of usefulness. config.h costs 6 rebuilds because six things depend on it, which is another way of saying six things needed what it provides. Read backwards, the rebuild cost is not a defect in the architecture but a direct measurement of how much a file is relied upon, and the only way to make every edit cheap is to build something where nothing depends on anything.
LIT over 7 leaf files and 7 targets, editing test.c rebuilds 1 target, editing main.c or util.c or net.c or parse.c rebuilds 4, and editing config.h or util.h rebuilds 6 - a mean of 4.14 and a spread of 5, with nothing visible in the source distinguishing the cheapest edit from the dearest
FIG This is the same reverse closure THE INCREMENTAL BUILD computes, sorted by cost rather than by file, because the ordering is the finding. AVAN reports the mean and immediately the spread, because on this distribution the mean describes no file at all: two files cost 6, four cost 4, one costs 1, and 4.14 is a number nobody ever pays.
FIG This is the same reverse closure THE INCREMENTAL BUILD computes, sorted by cost rather than by file, because the ordering is the finding. AVAN reports the mean and immediately the spread, because on this distribution the mean describes no file at all: two files cost 6, four cost 4, one costs 1, and 4.14 is a number nobody ever pays.
◆ sealed .dlw.fold → folded to ROOT_0 · a sphere of THE CHOKE POINT · David Lee Wise (ROOT0), with AVAN