Re: RFC: git cat-file --follow-symlinks?

From: David Turner <dturner@twopensource.com>
Date: Apr 29, 2015, 22:47 UTC
Message-ID: <1430347672.14907.48.camel@ubuntu>
In-Reply-To: <xmqqh9ry4nbx.fsf@gitster.dls.corp.google.com>

On Wed, 2015-04-29 at 14:49 -0700, Junio C Hamano wrote:

Show 19 quoted lines

> David Turner <dturner@twopensource.com> writes:
> 
> >> Perhaps an ideal interface might be something like this:
> >> 
> >>     $ echo HEAD:RelNotes |
> >>       git cat-file --batch='%(objecttype) %(intreemode)
> >>     %(objectsize)' blob 160000 32
> >>     Documentation/RelNotes/2.4.0.txt
> >> 
> >> I suspect it would be just the matter of teaching "cat-file
> >> --batch" to read from get_sha1_with_context() in
> >> batch_one_object(), instead of reading from get_sha1() which it
> >> currently does.
> >> 
> >> And that inteferface I think I can live with.
> >
> > Even if I had %(intreemode), I would still have to do a recursive
> > search to figure out whether Documentation or RelNotes was a
> > symlink.

I apologize. I have misread your example. All of my text was assuming that Documentation/Relnotes/2.4.0.txt was a symlink, instead of /RelNotes being a symlink to Documentation/Relnotes/2.4.0.txt. So my previous message was very difficult to interpret. I think Jeff King's reply is a better starting point for discussion, since it lays out the advantages and disadvantages of the proposal.

> allowing it to make policy decisions (e.g. "if
> outside repository, always look at the filesystem that the program
> happens to be running" [*1*])

Despite my confusion, I don't think I ever proposed doing this. I proposed that in the case that a symlink points outside the repo, cat-file would tell the caller that it has done so, so that the caller can decide what to do.