Why aren't config files force synced to disk?

[warjort]

It seems to be a common problem that when somebody loses power to their computer that some of the config files get corrupted. e.g. the most recent

https://forums.minecraftforge.net/topic/113418-modded-world-not-loading-version-1165/

My question is why aren't the config files forced synched to disk? They are just closed. Using a Closeable here:

https://github.com/TheElectronWill/night-config/blob/1d678751747451e3a8458cf12d0ced21b84ebcad/core/src/main/java/com/electronwill/nightconfig/core/io/ConfigWriter.java#L87

It is my understanding that this will just leave the data in the buffer cache, and doesn't guarantee it will be physically on disk. I could be wrong about that and it might depend on the OS?

 

Minecraft uses the following logic where file is a FileChannel - see net.minecraft.world.level.chunk.storage.RegionFile

         try {
            this.file.force(true);
         } finally {
            this.file.close();
         }

 

[warjort]

Yes, that is what I thought.

You can Channel.force() or FileDescriptor.sync() to ensure the data is written to disk.

Why isn't this done for config files to avoid corruption if you have things like power outages?

[warjort]

I am not saying it is a silver bullet, but it does decrease the time the config files are held in the buffer rather than on disk, making it less likely to happen.

People with large amounts of free memory can have large buffer caches that are not flushed for a while. 

[warjort]

I create this issue: https://github.com/TheElectronWill/night-config/issues/111