Re: [WIP PATCH] Add 'git fast-export', the sister of 'git fast-import'

From: Karl Hasselström <kha@treskal.com>
Date: Nov 27, 2007, 10:16 UTC
Message-ID: <20071127101614.GB26072@diana.vm.bytemark.co.uk>
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.64.0711261647400.27959@racer.site>

On 2007-11-26 16:48:14 +0000, Johannes Schindelin wrote:

Show 17 quoted lines

> On Sun, 25 Nov 2007, Karl Hasselström wrote:
>
> > On 2007-11-23 15:59:58 -0500, Shawn O. Pearce wrote:
> >
> > > I have been considering creating a "git-gui daemon" process that
> > > links to libgit.a and can be driven bidirectionally through its
> > > stdin/stdout. Based on git-fast-export, sorta. But I haven't
> > > even started it...
> > >
> > > But the idea is sort of what Han-Wen wants. Why should I fork
> > > rev-parse to get a ref value? Or update-ref to change one?
> >
> > Obviously, something like this would be very valuable for StGit as
> > well.
>
> Could you be a little more specific _what_ you want to do, and _how_
> this could be done with fast-export | fast-import?

Currently, a single StGit command can result in quite a few invocations of git-cat-file, for example, each of which forks off a new process. If it could start just one daemon such as Shawn proposed, and feed it simple questions and commands about blobs, trees, commits, and refs, that would probably be quite a lot faster.

From what I understand, this is not something that would fit a fast-export | fast-import pipeline. Which is why I didn't take the time to elaborate on (or indeed find out) exactly which commands StGit would like such a daemon to support.

By the way: one command one _would_ likely want in the daemon is "list modified files". Being long-lived (not when driven by StGit, perhaps, but definitely when driven by git-gui or qgit), the daemon would be able to use inotify for that.

-- 
Karl Hasselström, kha@treskal.com
      www.treskal.com/kalle