[GRASS-dev] vector library changes

[Markus Metz]

Hi all,

I have tried to make topology building in grass7 a bit faster, with 
limited success. Some functions are now a bit faster, but there are no 
drastic changes. Some other functions are now a bit slower, and there I 
would like to know if there are objections against these changes.

The first change causing a little slow down is in diglib: memory of no 
longer used structures is freed. That was mentioned as a TODO in the 
source code, probably by Radim. All I can see now is that cleaning time, 
e.g. v.in.ogr of a polygon vector, increases from e.g. 15m30s to 15m35s, 
IOW speed loss is in this case about 0.5%, but memory consumption is not 
really lower, even when cleaning large vectors with many areas (> 
50,000) where many structures should be freed. The new functions 
dig_free_node(), dig_free_line(), dig_free_area(), and dig_free_isle() 
in diglib/struct_alloc.c are called from within plus_line.c and 
plus_area.c. Maybe someone can have a look at the new functions in 
struct_alloc.c to check if I made a mistake? AFAIKT, there is no obvious 
mistake, resulting vectors are identical in my cleaning tests, no 
warnings or errors.

Another similar slow down (about 0.5%) is caused by G_percent which I 
added to all cleaning functions. The reasoning is that users may wonder 
if anything is happening at all when importing a large polygon vector 
with v.in.ogr or cleaning a large vector, and G_percent shows that there 
is something happening. I find that reassuring to know.

In short, grass7 is still about as fast as grass6 with regard to 
cleaning vectors (should be a bit faster with building topology, only 
noticeable with really large vectors), but gives a bit more feedback on 
the progress. The vector API as well as the vector format is unchanged.

If there are objections against these changes, I will revert them.

Regards,

Markus M