Re: [PATCH v2 2/8] upload-pack: implement ref-in-want

> Brandon Williams <bmwill@google.com> writes:
> 
> > I also think that we should keep this first implementation of
> > ref-in-want simple and *not* include patterns, even if that's what we
> > may want someday down the road.  Adding a new capability in the future
> > for support of such patterns would be relatively simple and easy.
> 
> I am all for many-small-steps over a single-giant-step approach.
> 
> >  The
> > reason why I don't think we should add pattern support just yet is due
> > to a request for "want-ref refs/tags/*" or a like request resulting in a
> > larger than expected packfile every time "fetch --tags" is run.  The
> > issue being that in a fetch request "refs/tags/*" is too broad of a
> > request and could be requesting 100s of tags when all we really wanted
> > was to get the one or two new tags which are present on the remote
> > (because we already have all the other tags present locally).
> 
> I do not quite get this.  Why does it have to result in a large
> packfile?  Doesn't the requester of refs/tags/* still show what it
> has via "have" exchange?