General: Should parallel conversions be added and how?

[yveszoundi]

Background

In the early days of Entrusted, its file processing times was comparable to Dangerzone.

• As Entrusted became much faster, parallel conversions were then considered not essential
  • There is the programming language difference and how code is written to achieve certain goals directly
  • There are other design choices: 1 step container pass instead of 2 container passes (document to pixels, pixels to PDF)
• Faster feels always better, especially if the cost is not too high to pay (memory or CPU usage)

Objectives

Keep in mind that this would also require switching from "row indexes" to "document ids" when submitting file for processing... It is not technically difficult to implement a quick and dirty initial implementation (Fast mapping of IDs to widget for progress notifications, etc.).

• Assess if the software should decide how many conversions can run in parallel based on system specifications
• Assess if the user should be able to decide how to allocate computer resources, possibly with some guardrails
• Assess if parallel conversions would create few anticipated potential problems
  • File mounts disappearing and/or data corruption in the container solution storage
  • Weird container image crashes with little to non-existent feedback that can be captured easily
    • Segmentation faults
    • Container process killed for no apparent valid reason
    • etc.
  • Plethora of problems with differences per container solution and/or version
    • "podman 2.x does this and podman 3.x does that.."
    • "however in Docker, xywxs happens and the container crashes"