Question: behavior on gauge flush

[tonyghita]

In statsd's documentation, they note that when not updated, a gauge will flush it's previous value (https://github.com/etsy/statsd/blob/master/docs/metric_types.md#gauges).

Does this behavior exist in statsite? Or will values only be flushed if they've been received within the flush period?

[large-epsilon]

Gauges will continue to be reported with their previous values. Still, it's best to periodically re-emit them, since they won't be persisted if statsite restarts.

Also, I only know that from having observed the behavior in practice. I just spent like an hour trying to find how gauge values are preserved in the code and couldn't figure it out. It looks like the gauge hashmap is freed during the flush just like everything else in the metrics struct, and I don't see where they're being copied over to the new metrics struct. If anyone knows how that works I'd definitely appreciate if you could update this thread to explain. Thanks!