From: Ingo Molnar Date: Wed, 13 Apr 2005 20:02:37 GMT Subject: Re: Index/hash order Message-ID: <20050413200237.GA26635@elte.hu> In-Reply-To: * Linus Torvalds wrote: > > with a plaintext repository we could do the 'hardlink trick' (which > > brings in other manageability problems and limitations but is at least a > > partially good idea), which would make the working tree and the > > repository share the same inode in most cases. > However, the real issue is that you're really asking for trouble. > There are tons of tools that modify files without breaking the > hardlink. Even some editors do. So you just use the wrong tool on the > tree by mistake, and not only is your archive corrupt, you've > corrupted all other archives that might have shared the same object > directory. that's what i loosely meant under 'manageability problems'. I mentioned one solution earlier: to make the repository object an immutable file (the +i flag on the inode) - it really wants to be immutable after all. That would solve a whole range of 'accidental corruption' issues. Another solution (suggested by Christer Weinigel) was to enforce immutability by making it owned by another user/group (git:git or whatever). but having a binary compressed format is 'soft immutability', done cleverly. Ingo