From: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
Date: Sat, 09 Nov 2013 21:21:07 GMT
Subject: Re: [PATCH 0/5] fix up 'jk/pack-bitmap' branch
Message-ID: <20131109212106.GA2712@sigill.intra.peff.net>
In-Reply-To: <87txflnv7n.fsf@linux-k42r.v.cablecom.net>

On Sat, Nov 09, 2013 at 10:03:56PM +0100, Thomas Rast wrote:

> > Of course. You write little endian and also read back little endian;
> > that should work just fine, no?
> >
> > OTOH, if you write with Intel and read with PPC, then you should observe
> > misbehavior with the above patch.
> 
> Maybe you could check in a simple test that the bitmap for a very
> predictable pack (e.g. only one commit) has a certain content, by
> checking its hash.  That would guard against accidental format changes.

Another option would be to cross-check reading and writing against JGit,
which is valuable for other reasons besides checking endianness. I do
not think most people will have JGit installed, but it's better than
nothing (and if even one person runs it, we have a chance of finding a
bug).

-Peff