Re: Request for detailed documentation of git pack protocol

From: Jakub Narebski <jnareb@gmail.com>
Date: May 14, 2009, 20:27 UTC
Message-ID: <200905142227.10669.jnareb@gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <alpine.LFD.2.00.0905141353040.6741@xanadu.home>

On Thu, 14 May 2009, Nicolas Pitre wrote:

Show 11 quoted lines

> On Thu, 14 May 2009, Jakub Narebski wrote:
> 
> > I was afraid of this: that the people who know pack protocol good
> > enough to be able to write it down are otherwise busy. But we get
> > detailed / updated packfile and pack index format descriptions some
> > time ago (thanks all that contributed to it!). I hope that the same
> > would happen with pack _protocol_ description.
> 
> If someone with the wish for such a document volunteers to work on it 
> then I'm sure people with fuller knowledge will review and comment on 
> the result as appropriate.

Well, but still somebody with time and at least some expertise in
the area would be required to start it.

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> > I was hoping of document in RFC format; dreaming about having it
> > submitted to IETF as (at least) unofficial RFC like Atom Publication
> > Protocol (or is it proper RFC these days?), and then accepted like
> > HTTP protocol.
> 
> I think we'd have to move to a new version of the protocol for that.  
> The current protocol, even if it does the job, is not particularly 
> elegant.

Are all RFC (including proposals / informational RFCs) defined protocols elegant? Well... perhaps they are. The quality of IETF standards is way higher than, say, ECMA :-)

But I accept that having RFC to be on the list of 'official' RFCs, even as an "experimental" RFC is just a dream. Nevertheless I think that following RFC format, which includes using a common set of terms such as "MUST" and "NOT RECOMMENDED" (as defined by RFC 2119), Augmented Backus–Naur Form (ABNF) (as defined by RFC 5234) as a metalanguage, would be a good idea for technical / protocol documentation.

-- 
Jakub Narebski
Poland