Idea: Cleaner separation between read/write and object code - Request for comment

[joequant]

Looking over the code, it seems that the read/write code is very tightly combined with the object code, and this causes some issues refactoring the code. For example, in trying to prevent bad copies, we are running into conflicts with ROOT, but those conflicts have to do with reading/writing.

So one thing that I propose is to separate out reading and writing code from the core components. In particular it should be possible to read/write objects and compile podio on a system without root. Alternatively it should be possible to use podio for format translation (i.e. read in the objects in ASCII format and output it into Root).

Would like some feedback as to what people think. If people think this is a good idea, then I'd like to work on some patches to separate out reading/writing from object handling, since a lot of the other issues that I've been looking at would be easier to handle if there was a clean separation between writing/reading and object handling

[hegner]

If it is highly coupled it is not by intention. In fact the idea was just to pass the pods around to the storage. And don't bother about how they are stored. Could you maybe in one meeting explain what you have in mind in concrete? Thanks :-)

[joequant]

I'll need another two or three weeks to play with/understand the code. But once I get a better idea of how it works, I'll come up with something more concrete. Things are still a bit slow on my end since I'm still doing paper chase games with funders, but I'm hoping that will clear up shortly so I can do work that doesn't involve filling out forms to beg for money. :-) ;-) :-)

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On Wed, Jul 22, 2020 at 4:41 PM hegner ***@***.***> wrote: If it is highly coupled it is not by intention. In fact the idea was just to pass the pods around to the storage. And don't bother about how they are stored. Could you maybe in one meeting explain what you have in mind in concrete? Thanks :-) — You are receiving this because you authored the thread. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#119 (comment)>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AAWGAGNJZUH2A2ZBX3DNXDLR42Q5NANCNFSM4PEMRB4Q> .

[tmadlener]

Completely decoupled I/O from in memory operations with introduction of the Frame in #287.
Additionally, some things were refactored to ease this in #197