Re: Git-aware HTTP transport

From: H. Peter Anvin <hpa@zytor.com>
Date: Aug 26, 2008, 04:14 UTC
Message-ID: <48B38340.8050504@zytor.com>
In-Reply-To: <20080826034544.GA32334@spearce.org>

Shawn O. Pearce wrote:

Show 9 quoted lines

> 
> So I think the cost may actually break even with a stateful protocol
> if we imagine that the server is actually a farm of systems and
> simple round-robin load-balancing is being done in front of the
> Git-aware server.
> 
> I'd really like to keep the protocol stateless on the server side, as
> this makes it easier to embed into certain commerical server farms.
>

Indeed. It was a question, not a statement of any sort. I was curious about the answer.

I really like the new draft, with the one consideration below.

Show 11 quoted lines

> 
> HTTP Transport
> --------------
> 
> All requests are encoded as HTTP POST requests to the smart service
> URL, "$url/backend.git-http/$service".
> 
> All responses are encoded as 200 Ok responses, even if the server
> side has "failed" the request.  Service specific success/failure
> codes are embedded in the content.
>

I still would like to have an indirection step at the start, in order to keep a single client on a server in the case of skew. I suggest simply do it as HTTP POST $url/backend.git-http, empty body, and return a URL prefix to use for the remainder of the session. That way a server who wants a stateful setup can return a URL which contains a session cookie; others can return a URL containing a target server, and finally others can simply return the requesting URL.

	-hpa