Lucene.net file I/O inefficiency and a question

[Van Den Berghe, Vincent]

Hello everyone,

This message contains two subjects, but since the second one is more of a 
question, I'll use the first subject as a "hook", hoping to get an answer  to 
the next one.
(start of  first subject)
There is an inefficient implementation of file I/O in Lucene.net, most notably 
in FSDirectory.FSIndexOutput. The number of write calls can be reduced by a 
factor of 2.
First we see this, which seems to be a copy paste from the Java code:

            /// <summary>
            /// The maximum chunk size is 8192 bytes, because <seealso 
cref="RandomAccessFile"/> mallocs
            /// a native buffer outside of stack if the write buffer size is 
larger.
            /// </summary>
            internal const int CHUNK_SIZE = 8192;

And then further on:

            protected internal override void FlushBuffer(byte[] b, int offset, 
int size)
            {
                //Debug.Assert(IsOpen);
                while (size > 0)
                {
                    int toWrite = Math.Min(CHUNK_SIZE, size);
                    File.Write(b, offset, toWrite);
                    offset += toWrite;
                    size -= toWrite;
                }
                //Debug.Assert(size == 0);
            }


This is not needed: in .NET FileStream.Write delegates to the native Win32 file 
implementation and allocates nothing, regardless the size of the buffer.
Wouldn't it be better to write:

            protected internal override void FlushBuffer(byte[] b, int offset, 
int size)
            {
              //Debug.Assert(IsOpen);
              File.Write(b, offset, size);
            }

... and get rid of the CHUNK_SIZE?
The default buffer size (from the BufferedIndexOutput class) is 16384 bytes, so 
this will reduce the number of I/O calls by 2.
There is a similar modification that can be done for 
SimpleFSIndexInput.ReadInternal.
There may be other places where similar code is used, but I couldn't 
conclusively prove a similar modification would help.
(end of the first subject)

Here's my question:  This is the third suggestion I'm making, based of 
real-world usage of Lucene.net:

-          Proposal to speed up implementation of 
LowercaseFilter/charUtils.toLower

-          CreateTempFile is not thread-safe (no, it really is not)

-          Lucene.net file I/O inefficiency
I'd like to make contributions to the Lucene.net project, but several personal 
and external factors are preventing me to be a contributor (in the Apache 
sense). I also may not have anything else or significant to contribute after 
this: there is no way to know.
How can I make sure that these suggestions are actually considered for ending 
up in the code? I've seen contributors doing modifications on behalf of other 
people. I care about problems being solved, and do not care about who's name is 
on them. What's the best way to proceed? Would it be better to post these 
things on GitHub somewhere?


Vincent