On May 22, 2008, at 5:19 PM, David Lutterkort wrote:

The @property_hash hash, which is not required by the general provider  
interface but is usually used by the package providers, is basically  
how the provider stores its current values.

That is, if the provider has been prefetched, then those prefetched  
values will be in that hash, or if the provider supports flushing,  
then the values will usually get set in that hash and flushed to disk  
at the end.

This is part of the API that has grown up informally and needs to be  
made a more official part of the API, since it's getting a bit messy.  
Of course, some classes might not ever use it (e.g., users and groups  
just directly run commands, so they don't use 'flush', and they might  
never use 'prefetch').

--
Talent hits a target no one else can hit; Genius hits a target no one
else can see. -- Arthur Schopenhauer
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Luke Kanies | http://reductivelabs.com | http://madstop.com