[development] Pathauto scaleability - path column in node / user table

[Gabor Hojtsy]

Neil Drumm wrote:
> Adrian Rossouw wrote:
> 
>> One of the things we discussed doing once 4.8 is open, around the 
>> time of vancouver, was
>> that in order to maintain an alias for each and every node, using the 
>> path table for that,
>> was just not going to scale.
>>
>> So, simply adding a 'path' column, which is in effect the preferred 
>> alias for that object, and then using a
>> node_link($node) function (or just l($node->path)), would allow us to 
>> run modules like pathauto on
>> very large production sites with thousands of nodes.
> 
> I actually scribbled something like this in my notebook a few nights ago.
> 
> Change the $path argument of l() to be $target which is either a path
> (string) or object with a link child. If the target is on object, then
> use $target->link without an alias lookup. This could be used for nodes,
> users, etc.

IMHO a good idea!

Goba