[PATCH] Proof-of-concept of a dual PHP–Python stack

[Frédéric Mangano-Tarumi]

Lukas Fleischer [2020-03-11 19:44:37 -0400]
> Thanks! I like the approach. I wonder what the performance impact of
> always querying the Python backend first would be, though, especially at
> the beginning when most requests are expected to yield a 404.

One way or the other, I don’t think it’s worth worrying about since most
404 consist of accessing a local socket and exchanging a few KB. Hardly
any disk or database access is performed. Best way to be sure is to
measure it under load though. Are the AUR servers often overloaded?

> Alternatively, would it make sense to use multiple location blocks and
> use the right upstream based on matching the path against a predefined
> set of patterns? It would add some additional maintenance work but since
> the overall plan is to migrate everything to Python eventually, it would
> exist only temporarily.

I couldn’t find a smart way to do it without turning it into a
maintenance burden. Beside, I can’t see any advantage over the fallback
approach, except a performance speedup which I believe would be
irrelevant.

> For an actual first patch to be merged, I suggest porting the RPC
> interface which is rather small and largely independent from other parts
> of the code.

Sure! But first, are there other approaches you would like to try out
before we begin the serious work?

Also, I’d like to make a proposal about regression testing to limit the
best we can potential bugs introduced by the rewrite.