Putting the checksum at the beginning of the file made it impossible to stream the file out when saving. The entire file had to be held in memory while it was checksummed so the checksum could be written at the beginning.
Instead place the checksum at the end. This does not break the existing Perl or C code since the read is not order dependent.
There are no plans to improve the Perl code to take advantage of this change, but it will make the C implementation more efficient.
Reviewed by Cynthia Shang.
Maintaining the storage layer/drivers in two languages is burdensome. Since the integration tests require the Perl storage layer/drivers we'll need them even after the core code is migrated to C. Create an interface layer so the Perl code can be removed and new storage drivers/features introduced without adding Perl equivalents.
The goal is to move the integration tests to C so this interface will eventually be removed. That being the case, the interface was designed for maximum compatibility to ease the transition. The result looks a bit hacky but we'll improve it as needed until it can be retired.
