[Tim Peters]
If you're using a current ZODB (anything at or after 3.2.1c1; 3.2.5 is the latest stable release in the 3.2 line), an attempt to pack to a time earlier than the most recent time ever packed to shouldn't do anything more than raise a FileStorageError with this detail:
The database has already been packed to a later time or no changes have been made since the last pack
[Chris Withers]
I'm sure I remember discussions where it was agreed that this annoying behaviour would be dropped? (or at least turned into a subclass that could be easily caught, rathe than having to catch FileStorageError and then do a string comparison o the exception arguments :-( )
[Tim]
It was changed (to log a message instead). I see that it's in ZODB 3.3 (under svn), but not on the Zope-2_7-branch branch of ZODB3 (under CVS). Don't know what happened there. Looks like we're missing several changes that were checked in -- maybe they're only on ZODB3 HEAD? Something's screwed up here indeed.
After more staring, same story: the changes are in ZODB 3.3 (used with Zope 2.8 and Zope 3), but not on CVS's Zope-2_7-branch branch of ZODB3. I don't intend to address anything other than critical bugfixes in the ZODB 3.2 line anymore, so I don't intend to change this. If someone else wants to merge in this specific change on Zope-2_7-branch, that would be OK by me.