Re: Implementing reftable in Git

From: Jonathan Nieder <jrnieder@gmail.com>
Date: May 9, 2018, 16:48 UTC
Message-ID: <20180509164807.GI10348@aiede.svl.corp.google.com>
In-Reply-To: <CAP8UFD0PPZSjBnxCA7ez91vBuatcHKQ+JUWvTD1iHcXzPBjPBg@mail.gmail.com>

Hi,

Christian Couder wrote:

> I might start working on implementing reftable in Git soon.

Yay!

[...]

> So I think the most straightforward and compatible way to do it would
> be to port the JGit implementation.

I suspect following the spec[1] would be even more compatible, since it would force us to tighten the spec where it is unclear.

>                                        It looks like the
> JGit repo and the reftable code there are licensed under the Eclipse
> Distribution License - v 1.0 [7] which is very similar to the 3-Clause
> BSD License also called Modified BSD License

If you would like the patches at https://git.eclipse.org/r/q/topic:reftable relicensed for Git's use so that you don't need to include that license header, let me know. Separate from any legal concerns, if you're doing a straight port, a one-line comment crediting the JGit project would still be appreciated, of course.

That said, I would not be surprised if going straight from the spec is easier than porting the code.

Thanks, Jonathan

[1] https://eclipse.googlesource.com/jgit/jgit/+/master/Documentation/technical/reftable.md