Re: Implementing reftable in Git

From: Jonathan Nieder <jrnieder@gmail.com>
Date: May 9, 2018, 17:48 UTC
Message-ID: <20180509174830.GJ10348@aiede.svl.corp.google.com>
In-Reply-To: <CAGZ79kZx=wHKc=2WLz-8pQWv1VhRq+pKVV9=Shq3gEMdkX-Q=A@mail.gmail.com>

Stefan Beller wrote:

> * We *might* be able to use reftables in negotiation later
>   ("client: Last I fetched, you said your latest transaction
>   number was '5' with the hash over all refs to be <sha1>;
>   server: ok, here are the refs and the pack, you're welcome").

Do you mean that reftable's reflog layout makes this easier?

It's not clear to me why this wouldn't work with the current reflogs.

[...]

> On Wed, May 9, 2018 at 7:33 AM, Christian Couder
> <christian.couder@gmail.com> wrote:

Show 6 quoted lines

>> During the last Git Merge conference last March Stefan talked about
>> reftable. In Alex Vandiver's notes [1] it is asked that people
>> announce it on the list when they start working on it,
>
> Mostly because many parties want to see it implemnented
> and were not sure when they could start implementing it.

And to coordinate / help each other!

[...]

> I volunteer for reviewing.

\o/

[...]

> With that said, please implement it in a way that it can not just be used as
> a refs backend, but can easily be re-used to write ref advertisements
> onto the wire?

Can you spell this out a little more for me? At first glance it's not obvious to me how knowing about this potential use would affect the initial code.

Thanks, Jonathan